4e. 

m 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES 



OR 

TRAVEL AND DISCUSSION 
IN THE BIRTH-COUNTRIES OF CHRISTIANITY 
WITH THE LATE HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE 



BY 

JOHN S. STUAET-GLEJSFNIE, M.A. 

II 

BAERISTER- AT- LAW 



"The handwriting is on the wall; the fiat has gone forth; the ancient empire shall 
be subverted ; the dominion of superstition, already decaying, shall break away and 
crumble into dust ; and it shall be clearly seen that, from the beginning, there has been 
no discrepancy, no incongruity, no disorder, no interruption, no interference." 

Buckle, History of Civilisation. 



NEW YORK 
D. APPLETON AND CO., BROADWAY 

1875 



HSioi 
.Q55 



4 8 6 5 5 5 

JUL 2 0 1942 



PEE FACE. 



It was during the two last Long- Vacations, — the 
former, at a spa in a beautiful ravine, rather than glen, 
of the great German forest of the Schwartzwald ; and 
the latter, on a mountain-side in the greater Scottish 
forest in which tower Lochnagar and Ben-muich-dhui, — 
that these Pilgrim- Memories — these memories of pil- 
grimage, with the late Mr. Buckle, to the Holy Places 
of Christianity, — were recalled and put-together. As 
verifying materials, I had my Eastern Diary and 
Letters, and various papers, both published and un- 
published, written shortly after my return home. And 
such is the strange nature of consciousness that, by 
this twofoldness of my existence, — actually amid the 
pines of the North, ideally amid the palms of the 
Orient, — the activity of memory was quickened greatly, 
and greatly vivified were its representations. 

A dozen years have elapsed since these 6 travels and 
discussions in the Birth-countries of Christianity ; ' and 
it may well be asked, why not have given an account 
of them sooner; or, — if not worth sooner giving an 
account of, — why give an account of them now ? 



vi 



PREFACE. 



Simply because it did not seem to me worth while to 
give any ampler account of these travels and discus- 
sions than I had already, in magazine-articles, given, 
unless I were able to make such ampler narrative of 
distinct service as Preface, or Prooemium, to my gene- 
ral work on 4 The Modern Eevolution.' But, just as 
the Preface to a book, though it stands first, is the last 
part to be written, so the ideas, at least, of a series of 
books must be got clear before the book, intended as a 
General Preface to them, can be written. Only now, 
however, do I find myself thus able to endeavour, at 
least, to make the narrative of my Eastern journey 
with Mr. Buckle of such service as, not merely, I hope, 
to justify, but to make desirable, an ampler account of 
it than I have as yet given. And hence the reason of 
my not having sooner written the following chapters ; 
and the reason of my writing them now. 

As Procemium, then, to my work on 6 The Modern 
Eevolution,' let me briefly state the main objects I have 
had in view in writing these Pilgrim- Memories. Of 
that general work, the purpose is, the enunciation, 
verification, and application of a Law of Thought, 
which will, I believe, be found to be the Eational, or 
Ultimate Law of History. But, as the verification of a 
General Law of History must evidently be the work of 
a lifetime, I would desire, before proceeding to attempt 
such verification, at least to make, in some degree, clear 



PREFACE. vii 

the general meaning and grounds of the Law I devote 
myself to verifying. In no way, however, perhaps, is 
the meaning, and are the grounds of a new hypothesis, 
theory, or principle, more readily made clear than by 
giving an account of the way in which the author 
himself reached it. And the first aim, therefore, of this 
prefatory volume is to lead the reader up to this Law 
through the consideration of those facts which, — and 
particularly in travel and discussion with Mr. Buckle, 
— led myself to its discovery. 

For I had already, before the publication of Mr. 
Buckle's first volume, conceived a project similar to 
that of his £ History of Civilisation in England,' the 
project, namely, of a 'History of British Law.' I had 
also seen that the scientific basis of such a History 
must, as he maintained, with reference to his £ History 
of Civilisation,' be a Law, or Laws, derived from the 
larger History of Thought. A certain general Law of 
Thought, — a Law of Change in men's notions of the 
Causes of Chang e^ — I had likewise, before meeting 
with Mr. Buckle, arrived at. But the middle stage, the 
stage of the advance from the earlier to the later mode 
of conceiving the Causes of Change, was as yet unde- 
fined. And hence, this general Law I was as yet un- 
able to enunciate in a sufficiently complete form to be 
of much practical use in the interpretation of History. 

The question, therefore, with me was, Were those 
Mental Laws on which Mr. Buckle had founded his 



PREFACE. 



6 History,' or rather projected ' History of Civilisation 
in England,' true and sufficient; or, if, in some very 
limited application, true and sufficient, were they, 
and particularly was that one as to the effect of 
Moral Forces as historical causes, true and sufficient 
as the basis of a General History of Civilisation? 
This, the general question in all my discussions with 
Mr. Buckle, naturally ran-out into all those special 
questions ordinarily discussed between Materialists and 
Idealists. Nor, I hope, will my account of these dis- 
cussions be without service in making popularly clear 
the mutual connection of all these questions. Not, how- 
ever, to mere metaphysical questions were these dis- 
cussions confined. If Moral Forces were of no effect 
as historical Causes, how was the origin of Christianity 
to be accounted for; how, the origin of Islamism 
which followed, and how, that of Buddhism which 
preceded, it by five hundred years ? And it was in the 
discussion, more particularly, of this question with Mr. 
Buckle, in the suggestions, with respect to it, of travel, 
in the birth-countries of Christianity, and in after-study, 
that that middle stage in the history of the conception 
of Causation was, at length, discovered, the defining of 
which was, when I met Mr. Buckle, still wanting in my 
enunciation of w T hat I believed to be the Ultimate Law 
of History. 



PREFACE. 



ix 



But the discovery even of an Ultimate Law of 
History was not, with me, an end, but only a means. 
For, through all the weak or worldly sophisms 
of contemporary presentations of Christianity, it was 
clear that the backbone of it, as a religion, is a certain 
theory, or philosophy of History. It was clear that 
this Christian Philosophy of History is opposed, in 
the very conceptions that are its bases, to that 
New Philosophy of History which, especially since 
Hume and Kant, it has been the great and variously- 
labouring aim of Modern Science to construct. And, 
so, just as the Christian Synthesis of History has been, 
it appeared that a Scientific Synthesis of History, — 
expressed in the characteristic scientific form of a Law, 
— would be, in the moral or emotional presentation 
of it, an Ideal, a Eeligion. Clear it was, therefore, that 
the scientific inquirer who has for his aim the discovery 
of an Ultimate Law of History, must aim also, if he 
has a true consciousness of the nature of his task, at 
discovering what will alone be an adequate basis of 
that New Ideal rendered necessary by the incredibility 
now of the Christian theory of History. And clear also 
it was that, conversely, the religious inquirer who would 
gain a more satisfying Ideal than that Christian one 
which Science makes more and more incredible, must, 
if he has a true knowledge of the conditions of such an 
Ideal, aim, first of all, at the discovery of an Ultimate 
Law of History. And the second, therefore, of my three 



X 



PREFACE. 



main objects in recording these Pilgrim,- Memories is 
to suggest, at least, to the reader, something both of the 
moral and poetic grandeur of that New Ideal which 
gradually dawns on us as we gain a glimpse of the 
Law of Progress, the Law of Human Development. 

But, in order to do this without ambiguity, those 
contemporary presentations of Christianity, to which I 
have alluded, make it necessary that I should here 
state what I mean, — and what, as I hold, can 
alone, by a scientific historian, be meant, — by the 
terms Christianity and Christianism. By Christianity 
I mean that great historical system which culminated 
in the philosophy of Scholasticism, the religion of 
Catholicism, and the polity of Feudalism. And by 
Christianism I mean that historical theory which 
represents Jesus of Nazareth as a supernatural being 
who came on earth for the good of mankind, was 
put to death, and rose again to sit on the right hand 
of God. In a word, by this term I mean that central 
theory held in common by the Greek, the Latin, and 
the Protestant Churches. Against talk, therefore, about 
Christianity as if it meant but a certain morality, or 
sentiment, I protest as, at once, dishonest and untruth- 
ful ; dishonest, because those from whom, by lauding 
Christianity in the esoteric sense of a mere sentiment, a 
cheer is caught, understand by it a theory as well as a 
sentiment ; untruthful, because every scholar well knows 
that what was distinctive of Christian morality was, not 



PREFACE. 



xi 



its maxims, but its sanctions, and these were, and are, 
wholly dependent on its historical theory. 

Considering, then, the historical theory of Chris- 
tianity as the backbone of it, — the Christian Gospel 
being essentially a theory of History, — the above-stated 
second object of the record of these Pilgrim-Memories 
is, it must be confessed, destructive as well as re-con- 
structive. For the question implicitly, in the following 
narrative, put to the reader will be — whether, placing 
oneself in the very scenes of the Miracles of the 
Biblical History, and realising all one certainly knows 
of the order of Nature, and the development of Mind, 
and — with respect more especially to the last, — what, 
in Egypt, one so clearly, as I think, sees to be the phy- 
sically necessitated ignorance in which those primitive 
conceptions and myths originated which are to be found 
so wonderfully little changed in the Creed of Chris- 
tianity, — can one, then, venture to affirm that one truly 
and honestly believes that these Biblical Miracles actually 
occurred ? But, stripped as thus the Holy Places of 
Christianity may be imagined to be of all their pro- 
foundly stirring interest, and shorn, the scenes of this 
pilgrimage both of idyllic romance and of tragic 
pathos ; the second question which will, in the follow- 
ing narrative, be implicitly put to the reader, will be, 
whether it is not the fact that, notwithstanding, or 
rather as a consequence of, the vanishing of popular 
beliefs concerning these Holy Places, thoughts are, by 



xii 



PREFACE. 



actual or ideal presence on these scenes of pilgrimage, 
suggested which give to Man's history an incommen- 
surably grander aspect than under Christian beliefs ; 
an aspect, indeed, which only the highest poetic 
genius could adequately present in the sublimity of its 
romance, its comedy, and its tragedy ? 

But yet a third object I have had in view in writing 
these Pilgrim-Memories. My first aim I have stated as 
being to lead the reader up, and particularly through 
an account of my discussions with Mr. Buckle, to that 
Law which I trust to be hereafter able to verify as the 
Ultimate Law of History. But profoundly as I differed 
from Mr. Buckle, greatly I was indebted to my discus- 
sions with him for the discovery of that Law. Most 
truly does Miss Shirreff say of him : 4 Nothing roused his 
sympathy more than the efforts of another mind to reach 
or to spread knowledge ; . . . and his temper in discus- 
sion was perfect ; he was a most candid opponent and 
an admirable listener.' And hence, — and particularly 
as no biography of Mr. Buckle, and but certain biogra- 
phical materials only have been published, — it has 
seemed by no means beyond the scope of this Proce- 
mium that I should endeavour in it to make as com- 
plete a farther contribution as was in my power to the 
biography of him to whom I was thus indebted. 

With reference, however, more particularly to my 
discussions with Mr. Buckle, as there must always be a 



PREFACE. 



xiii 



certain delicacy and difficulty in reporting what lias been 
said by a dead man, it may be desirable to state trie 
principles by which I have been guided. In the first 
place, a conversation should be either fully and lite- 
rally reported, or it should be distinctly stated that no 
attempt has been made to represent conversational 
power. Let it be understood, therefore, that no such 
attempt is here made, and that, what I have in my 
dialogues given, is, not reports of conversations, but 
merely very summary abstracts of arguments or dis- 
cussions extending, each of them, over many hours, 
and ^sometimes many days. Secondly, while in such 
abstracts, the actual worlds used can evidently not be 
given except here and there, there ought to be the most 
scrupulous endeavour to give fair and forcible expres- 
sion to the opinions reported. To ensure such force and 
fairness, I have given all Mr. Buckle's more important 
opinions in the very words of his published writings. 
And, thirdly, it should be reckoned a betrayal of the 
confidence of companionship to report any opinion 
whatever not found in published writings, or not of 
such a nature as to have been expressed freely, and 
without reserve, to others. No such opinions of Mr. 
Buckle's will be found in the following pages. And I 
trust that, conforming as they do to such principles 
as these, no objection will be found sustainable to 
my reports of discussions with him. 

As to personal characterization, I have been guided 



xiv 



PREFACE. 



by similar principles. Nothing whatever of a private 
nature is even alluded to. For, as nothing in life is 
more valuable than friendship, nothing should be more 
strictly guarded than those confidences, either volun- 
tary or necessary, fear of the betrayal of which makes 
friendly intimacy so excusably shunned, because so 
generally regretted. But, with this limit, I have 
interwoven in my narrative, not only my own, but all 
other reminiscences of Mr. Buckle. And for the sake 
of farther completeness, I have given, in an Appendix, a 
brief account of Mr. Buckle's student-life, an Ameri- 
can's reminiscences of Mr. Buckle at Cairo, and three 
letters on the death of Mr. Buckle. 

In reference to the title of this volume, let me say 
that this Eastern journey was distinctly a pilgrimage, 
rather than a tour. For not otherwise is, I think, a 
journey to be characterized in which the places visited 
are regarded as of the profoundest historical — nay, if 
you will — even ' sacred ' interest ; and a journey of 
which the chief object is to gain that enlargement 
of sympathy, and greater truthfulness of view which 
is true spiritual advancement. Truth, indeed, has 
been sought, not in the attempt to preserve the at- 
mosphere of traditional belief, but in the attempt, 
on the contrary, to submit this atmosphere to the 
test of new and varied conditions ; and so to dis- 
cover whether it is a really true and natural one, 



PREFACE. 



xv 



or one which, more or less false and artificial, dis- 
torts and discolours everything we see through it. 
But a conviction of the profound truth of the great 
Baconian doctrine of 4 Idols ' — that the Mind is, from 
nature and education, full of notions mostly false, the 
sceptical testing of all of which, without exception, is 
the first duty of whoever would endeavour to see 
things as they really are — a conviction of this is the 
ground and basis of all scientific method. And among 
the worst of these 4 Idols,' Bacon accounted the false 
notions with which Theology and Superstition have 
corrupted Philosophy — 4 At corruptio Philosophise ex 
Superstitione et Theologia admista, latius omnino 
patet, et plurimum mali infert, aut in philosophias 
integras, aut in earum partes.' 

But long as, from various circumstances, this volume 
has been in passing through the press, I do not now 
issue it without feeling the need of much indulgence 
from those who may peruse it. One or two ideas run 
through it which, I venture to think, are, in the main, 
true and important. But the art of expression is diffi- 
cult. And, indeed, the more one feels and knows of 
the complexity of human existence, the more con- 
vinced, I think, one must become that fully truthful 
expression is the prerogative, not of Philosophy, but of 
Art only, and especially Shakespearian Art. And yet, 
inadequate in all as this book will certainly, and 
erroneous in much as it will not improbably be found, 

a 



xvi 



PREFACE. 



I would fain hope that there may still be truth 
and fruitfulness enough in it ever to give me pleasure 
in associating with these memories of Oriental pilgrim- 
age those mountain-and-forest-scenes of the North 
amid which they were recalled ; the German forest 
with its sunsets behind a ridge of pines that, cresting 
the deep shadow of a long wooded ravine, stood out, 
in a black fretwork, against crimson and gold ; and the 
Scottish forest, where he sank in a grandly tumultuous 
sea of bare mountain-summits, athwart which, under a 
heaven of every magnificence of colour, there was shed 
every tender and every tragic tone of that darkness 
and light which is the most significant symbol, or 
material expression, of the facts of our spiritual 
existence. 

J. S. S.-G. 

Lincoln's Inn: 

May 1875. 



CONTENTS. 



PART I. 



EGYPT. 

CHAP. PAGE 

I. The Gate of Ethiopia 3 

II. The Nile-Oasis 26 

III. The Capital of Araby .47 

PART II. 
SINAI. 

I. The Wells of Moses 69 

II. The Alps of the Tur . . . ... 93 

III. The Mount of God 137 

PART III. 
IDUMMA. 

I. To Akaba by Hazeroth 169 

II. The Shore of the Sea of Coral : — 

Section I. The Origin of a New Religion . 184 
II. The Definition of the Ethical 

Standard .... 206 
III. The Quest of a Law of History 220 
III. To Hebron by Petra 247 



xviii 



CONTENTS. 



PART IV. 
PALESTINE, 

CHAP. PAGB 

I. The Sepulchre of God 293 

II. The Battlefield of Armageddon .... 328 
III. The Birthplace of Jesus 386 

PART V. 

LEBANON. 

I. The Mistress of the Seas . . . . . 407 
II. The Yallet of the Shadow of Death . . . 435 
III. The Earthly Paradise 453 

APPENDIX. 

ADDITIONAL PERSONAL DETAILS. 

I. Mr. Buckle's Student-life and Character . . 485 
II. An American's Reminiscences of Mr. Buckle at 

Cairo . . . . . . . . . 492 

III. The Death and Grave of Mr. Buckle . . . 507 



PAST I. 
EGYPT. 



CHAPTEE I. 



AT TEE GATE OF FTEIOPIA. 

After a sojourn of three weeks at Malta, and three 
days spent in slipping swiftly through the calm waters 
of the great Midland Sea, I arrived at Alexandria and 
found myself suddenly amid a vast and strangely mixed 
throng of Western and Eastern life. Not here, how- 
ever, shall I say anything either of explorations of the 
antiquities 1 of the Empire-city founded by Alexander, 
whither his body was carried from Babylon for sepul- 
ture ; or of reflections on the Neoplatonic struggles 
of the intellectual Capital of the World during the great 
age* of the birth and establishment of Christianity; or 
of experiences of the society of the commercial Em- 
porium of Europe, Africa, and Asia, — though most 
interesting was the mixture of Muslim and Christian 
manners and customs, and most charming, not only the 
beauty of certain Uranies and Athenes, but their en- 
thusiasm for Greece, the country of their mother, and 
everything that was Greek. For in a personal narra- 
tive connected with but myself there could be little 
interest ; and I propose, therefore, to overleap all the 

1 See Mahmoud Bay, Memoir e sur V antique Alexandrie, ses Faubourgs 
et Environs, decouverts par les fouilles, sondages, nivellements et autres 
recherches faits apres les ordres de S.A. le Khedive. Copenhague, 1871. 

B 2 



4 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



months of my Eastern journey till my first meeting with 
Mr. Buckle ; as I shall also spare the reader all the 
months of it after his lamentable death. 

So, with reference to Alexandria, I shall here but 
note that, at the house at which I happened to lunch 
the day after my arrival, I was told by my fair hostess, 
a daughter of Lady Duff-Gordon, the authoress of the 
charmingly sympathetic Letters from Egypt, that they 
had had the pleasure of giving a party for Mr. Buckle 
some three weeks previously. But he had by that time 
left Cairo some ten days on his voyage up the Nile. 
Scarce a chance, therefore, appeared there to be of my 
meeting him. Still less could I imagine that, during a 
third of my whole journey in the East, we should be 
fellow-travellers. And the improbability of even meet- 
ing him became greater as, by the historic interest to 
me of the place, and the kindly hospitality of the 
people — most of the principal Europeans, including the 
British Consul-General, Mr. (afterwards Sir Eobert) 
Colquhoun, being Scotsmen and countrymen — I was 
induced to stay a full week at Alexandria. But what 
seems most improbable is often that which actually 
occurs. And at the classical Syene, — Asouan, the 
Egyptian Souan, the 6 Opening ' into, or £ Gate ' of 
Nubia, or, as it was called by the Greeks, Ethiopia, — 
more than seven hundred miles up the Nile, on the 9th 
of January, 1862, I at length met Mr. Buckle. 

We— Mr. P , his brother, Captain E. P , 

and myself— had arrived the previous day in our daha- 
beah, 6 La Nina,' s The Pet,' (so named from a Spanish 
reminiscence). But we had been variously occupied till 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



5 



late into a moonlit night. For 1 the Governor has here to 
be seen, and arrangements made for the passage of the 
Cataract. And besides the many objects of a past, 
there are more of a present, interest. The beauty of 
the women is divine in its physical perfection. It is a 
woman, Lady Duff-Gordon, who has said that 4 it is 
worth while going to Nubia to see the girls. Up to 
twelve or thirteen, they are neatly dressed in a bead 
necklace, and a leather fringe, four inches wide, round 
their loins ; and anything so absolutely perfect as their 
shapes, or so sweetly innocent as their look, cannot be 
conceived. . . [The married women wear a single 
loose blue shift or robe.] I was in raptures at seeing 
how superb an animal man (and woman) really is. . . 
I never knew what a woman's breast can be before I 
came here ; it is the most beautiful thing in the world, 
and gloriously independent of stays or any support. n 
And so, Mr. Warburton says of a girl at Phike, 4 she 
approached more nearly the ideal of perfect loveliness 
than any other I have ever seen, and might have 
passed for the very spirit of that wild and beautiful 
region. Her complexion, though very dark, was of 
that bronze colour so familiar to our eyes in statues, 
that it formed no detraction to the general beauty. 
And with her large lustrous gentle eyes, and voice, 
sweet and low and plaintive, she was what Eve might 
well have been.' 2 

So it was not till the next day, the 9th, that, 
lunching with some friends who had got up before us, 

1 Letters from Egypt, pp. 52, 86, and 166. 

2 The Crescent and the Cross, p. 46 (11th edition). 



6 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



I chanced to hear that the occupant of the only da- 
habeah that was downward-bound was Mr. Buckle, 
and that already all his preparations were made for 
departure. I called, therefore, that afternoon, having 
great political news to communicate which a wealthy 
countryman of mine, much favoured by the Viceroy, 
and who had come up in one of his steamers, had 
brought us the previous evening. So, — through the 
throng of Arabs, Copts, and Nubians, vendors of 
ostrich eggs and other wares and curiosities ; Dancing- 
girls, Abyssinian and Ghawazee, handsome, gold- 
bedecked Hamdas and Lateefehs ; and, less venal 
than these, divinely-shaped, speaking-eyed Baccheetas, 
from the Nubian island of Elephantine opposite, fitly 
called the 6 Isle of Flowers,' — I, with some difficulty , 
made my way, and crossed the plank from the sands 
to the lower deck of Mr. Buckle's dahabeah. Thence, 
I was ushered into the little saloon-cabin under the 
quarter-deck, and was first of all struck by the change in 
Mr. Buckle from what I remembered him, on the only 
occasion on which I had previously seen him, when 
delivering at the Eoyal Institution, with the fluency and 
eloquence of the most accustomed and accomplished 
speaker, his lecture c On the Influence of Women,' 
— his first, and unfortunately his last, public address. 
Yet perhaps it was the beard he now wore, and his 
negligent dress, that chiefly made it difficult for me to 
recognise, in the worn-out student, the successful 
author, and lion of a London season. For he had now 
almost completely recovered his health, and indeed 
wrote of his state at this time — 8 I feel very joyous 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



7 



and altogether full of pugnacity, so that I wish some 
one would attack me, I mean attack me speculatively — 
I have no desire for a practical combat.' 

The news I had to give was the death of the 
Prince Consort, and, in consequence of the Trent affair, 
the threatened war with America. The latter, Mr. 
Buckle, as I, most heartily wished might never occur. 
The former event, however much to be regretted 
for the Queen's sake, neither he nor I could see 
any important political results from, except so far 
as, in its indirect effects, it would probably be one 
of many causes working to the Bepublican transfor- 
mation of Constitutional Monarchy. And how far 
this forecast has been fulfilled is for those to say who 
can truly compare the state of political feeling and 
opinion now with what it was twelve years ago, and 
connect the change with its individual, as well as with 
its general causes. But by a reference to the works of 
Burke and of Junius, we were led from politics to the 
subject of Style ; then, to that of Method ; and thence, 
by the link of the application of Method, our conversa- 
tion passed to the subject of so-called 4 Spiritualism.' 

Mr. Buckle gave me an account of a seance to 
which he had been specially invited, at the house of 

Mrs. M G , and under the presidency of Mr. 

Home. And such, he said, had been the effect on 
him of what he then saw, in his overwrought state, 
after the publication of his second volume, that he 
had never ventured to go to a second sitting. But he 
expressed himself in the most sanguine manner as to 
the possibility, nay, probability of the most revolu- 



8 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



tionary discoveries in the thorough investigation of 
these phenomena of e Spiritualism.' I thought that 
these phenomena should be clearly distinguished from 
the vulgar theory of them ; and that an unscientific 
petitio principii would be avoided if they were qualified 
as Homian rather than as Spiritualist. In the scientific 
explanation of such of these Homian phenomena as 
are not already scientifically explained, if any such there 
are, our knowledge might possibly be greatly extended. 1 
In the spiritualist, or rather spiritist, theory of them, 
we should but return to that earliest mode of explain- 
ing things, no longer current among civilised races, 
except in reference to those sacred supernaturalisms, 
which one is branded ' Infidel ' for examining. For 

1 In the course of a correspondence in the Pall Mall Gazette, May, 
1868, on Science and Spiritualism, I gave fuller expression to this 
opinion in the following terms : — ' I venture to doubt the logic of the 
dilemma stated by Dr. Tyndall in reference to a meeting with Mr. 
Home. " The investigation can have but one of two results : either his 
phenomena will be proved delusive, or I shall be converted to the ranks 
of Spiritualism." 

1 There is surely a third hypothesis tenable with respect to so-called 
spiritualistic phenomena, namely, that they are neither wholly delusive, 
nor entirely caused by Spirits, but that they are, in part at least, real, 
and, as far as they are so, to be accounted for by natural causes. 

'It is because, if these phenomena are pronounced by competent 
authority not to be delusive, I believe that their explanation will lead, 
not to Spiritualism or the knowledge of a Spirit-world, but to a greatly 
extended knowledge of the interaction of bodies on each other, and 
particularly of the correlations of physical and psychological forces, that 
I, with many others, rejoice in the prospect of a scientific investigation 
of the assertions of Spiritualists. 

'If, however, these phenomena are real, and naturally explicable, 
their explanation will tax all the ingenuity, not of physicists only, but 
of biologists and psychologists. 

' That, if real, these phenomena should, in the first stage of their 
investigation, be attributed to Spirits, is evidently in accordance with 
that general historic law formulated by Comte.' 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



9 



Spiritualism, or rather Spiritism, 1 is simply that theory 
in which events are attributed to Supernatural Agents, 
or that theory of Personal Causes, which is, in all its 
forms, essentially identical with the primitive theory of 
Causation. Witchcraft, — from which, however, we 
must distinguish Magic, as conceived by the greater 
Neoplatonists, — is really, if we consider it fundament- 
ally, but the experimental science based on the Spiritist 
Philosophy ; and the so-called modern Spiritism is thus 
but a new development of one of the oldest forms of 
Witchcraft, — Necromancy. But the foundation of both 
the earlier and the later Necromancy' — the hypothesis 
of the real existence of Spirits — seems to me now, 
with all our later knowledge, to be the last to be 
even for a moment considered in the attempt to explain 
any phenomena whatever. 

This, however, appeared to Mr. Buckle to be 
going too far. He admitted, indeed, that the large 
circular drawing-room table, which he averred that he 
had seen floating in mid-air, was a phenomenon pro- 

1 Mr. Tylor prefers using the term 1 Animism ' in this general sense, 
because 'the word " Spiritualism," though it may be, and sometimes is, 
used in a general sense, has this obvious defect to us, that it has 
become the designation of a particular modern sect, who indeed hold 
extreme spiritualistic views, but cannot be taken as typical representa- 
tives of these views in the world at large.' — Primitive Culture, vol. i. 
p. 388. But I would avoid the inconvenience noted by Mr. Tylor, rather 
by introducing the new term ' Homianism,' than by giving to 'Animism,' 
hitherto chiefly used to denote the special theory of Stahl, not only a 
new meaning, but a meaning already, sometimes at least, as he himself 
admits, attached to ' Spiritualism.' For, as I have elsewhere pointed- 
out, Causes are at first conceived as Spirits, then, during a transitional 
stage (beginning, in General History, about the sixth century B.C.), 
as Entities, and ultimately as Relations ; and no terms seem better to 
denote these three successive Philosophies than 4 Spiritism,' ' Eutitism,' 
and ' Relationism.' 



10 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



bably due, not to Spirits, but to the development of 
some new force. 1 But the existence of Spirits, and of 
a Spirit-world, it seemed to pain him to hear even 
doubted. It was the thought of the possibility of 
coming into communication with one beloved Spirit 
that had excited him so much, as to make it impossible 
for him to pursue those investigations into Homianism 
which, however, he still proposed, at some future time, 
to undertake. His yearning desire to come into com- 
munication with that Spirit, once his nearest relative, 
had, indeed, been so strong as to create for itself the 
un doubting belief that, in the Future State, we shall 
recognise one another ; 2 nay, so strong as to have made 
him fancy he had actually been brought into such 
spiritual communication as he yearned for. For a day 
or two after his mother's death he thus wrote — ' What 
is that, which, passing over us like a shadow, strains the 
aching vision as we gaze on it ? Whence comes that 
source of mysterious companionship in the midst of soli- 
tude; that ineffable feeling which cheers the afflicted?' 3 
The cold Deism also professed by Mr. Buckle needs a 
theory of Spirits. For if men have not in their re- 
ligious, they must, in their other beliefs, have stimulants 
for the imagination, and food for the affections. But 
the mention of this bias of Mr. Buckle's judgment by his 
feelings will, I trust, only serve to correct the concep- 

1 Compare Reminiscences of Mr. Buckle, by J. A. Longmore — 
Aihenceum, 25th January, 1873, p. 115. 

2 Compare Personal Reminiscences of the late Henry Thomas Buckle — 
Atlantic Monthly, April, 1863, p. 498, or Appendix B. 

3 See his Essay on Mill on Liberty, Miscellaneous and Posthumous 
Works, vol. i. p. 67 j and compare Biographical Notice, ibid. p. xlvii. 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



11 



tion of his character, which many have wrcmgly drawn, 
from his having denied in History the efficacy of Moral 
Causes. 

In reference to those phenomena which Mr. Buckle 
seemed inclined to believe were real, and which, 
if so, I maintained were certainly explicable other- 
wise than by any Spirit-hypothesis — I said, Be it, for 
the sake of argument, admitted that such phenomena 
there are. Scientific explanation, as I understand it, 
being simply the connecting of hitherto unconnected 
powers and phenomena, with already known powers 
and phenomena ; the history of Science may be gene- 
ralised as the history of the progressive establishment 
of the great principle of Mutual Determination. And 
there is, I think, particularly one hypothesis which, as 
being one of Mutual Influence, and grounded on known 
facts, may possibly be found to be of service, both in 
explaining certain classes of hitherto unexplained 
phenomena, and in further developing the great scien- 
tific principle of Reciprocal Action. 

' What is that?' asked Mr. Buckle with eager- 
ness. The hypothesis which I would suggest is but a 
combination of these highest generalisations of Modern 
Science, namely : the conception of bodies as systems 
of molecular motion ; the conception of bodies, further, 
not as isolated, but as acting mechanically on each 
other as parts of a system ; and the conception of 
mental states and changes as having equivalents in 
states and changes of molecular motion. Let, then, 
bodies, conceived as systems of motion, be further con- 
ceived, in accordance with that hypothesis of Matter 



12 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



suggested by Faraday, 1 confirmed by those facts which 
destroy the theory of 4 action at a distance,' 2 and lead- 
ing finally to that conception of Atoms, as mutually de- 
termining, which, as I have endeavoured to show, 3 is 
alone in accordance with the principle of the Conserva- 
tion of Energy, — let bodies be conceived, not as isolated, 
but as parts of a system, and as acting universally on 
each other through mechanical 6 lines of force,' variously 
deflected in their mutual action, but directly or indi- 
rectly exerting influence in spheres of quite indefinite 
extent. And further, let the accepted fact of psychology 
be borne in mind, that all mental action whatever is 
but an aspect of a certain mechanical action ; every 
feeling, every thought, every desire or volition imply- 
ing, rather than being a consequence of, certain mole- 
cular motions and mechanical changes. And yet further, 
let some bodies be conceived as either permanently, or 
occasionally, more capable than others of affecting, and 
being affected by the lines of force from other bodies. 
Then, just as the molecular motion of any one organ of 
an animal body varyingly affects, and is affected by, the 
dynamic equilibrium of every other organ ; so may 
individual bodies, conceived as systems of motion, not 
only varyingly affect, and be affected by each other 
through a mechanically conceived medium ; but such 

1 Experimental Researches, vol. ii. p. 284, and vol. iii. p. 44, fig. 

2 This theory was first shaken by Faraday's proof of electrical 
induction being an action of contiguous particles instead of being an 
action of either particles or masses at a sensible distance. Ibid. 
series xl. 

3 See my papers on The Principles of the Science of Motion — Philoso- 
phical Magazine, 1861 ; and Reports of the Britisli Association, 1859, 
1860, and 1861. ' 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



13 



influence may be a consequence of mental actions 
which, if the} r have all mechanical equivalents, would, 
through a medium, be mechanically communicable. 
For suppose a mental change takes place in an indi- 
vidual, and he becomes possessed by a certain strong 
feeling or desire. On its material side, this mental 
change, and supervening condition, is a certain change, 
and supervening state of molecular motion. If, then, 
other bodies, and particularly other animated bodies, 
are systems of molecular motion; and if all bodies 
are more or less directly connected through mechanical 
lines of force raying out from each, and varying in 
character with the mechanical and psychological state 
of each ; then, a change in the mental condition of an 
individual, being a change also in his state of molecular 
motion, must affect the mechanical states, and hence 
mental conditions of others, though, unquestionably, 
such influence may be so infinitesimal as to be quite 
incognisable. 

The hypothesis that such a mechanico-psychological 
mutual influence is not infinitesimal, is an application 
of the fact of Solidarity, which has, I continued, 
great charms for me. And I am inclined to think that 
such facts as, for instance, some of those of which we 
disguise from ourselves the wonder by glibly calling 
them 4 instinctive ; ' those perhaps, also, of the conta- 
gion of ideas, and particularly of religious enthusiasms ; 
those, generally, of the contemporaneity, in different in- 
dividuals, of similar mental states and ideas ; those also 
of the peculiar influence exerted by certain individuals ; 
and, further, facts of verified dreams, sudden unaccount- 



14 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



able anxieties, and those strange impulses of which so 
many persons can tell in reference to. others to whom 
they have been tenderly attached, and who have been 
in distress while they have been absent — such facts as 
these, or some of them, may, I am inclined to think, 
possibly be found to require for their complete expla- 
nation some such hypothesis as that which I have stated 
of Mutual Influence. No doubt much, and possibly all, 
that is extraordinary in these facts may be owing merely 
to coincidence, and to the tendency of most persons, who 
have had no scientific training, to narrate remarkable 
occurrences in such a way as to appear as inexplicable 
as possible by ordinary causes. But as a general fact, 
Solidarity, or the action of all bodies, animate and 
inanimate, on each other, is unquestionable ; and 
though such facts as I have instanced may possibly be, 
all of them, adequately explained without the suggested 
hypothesis ; yet the proof of it would be but the proof 
of a kind of Mutual Influence perfectly susceptible, as 
I think, of being conceived in a scientific manner — of 
being conceived, that is, in accordance with known 
facts and verifiable theories. As, at least, a possibly 
useful auxiliary guide, some such hypothesis we must, 
I think, take with us, if we would successfully explore 
that Ethiopian wonderland, into which few as yet enter, 
but wild huntsmen and unscientific pioneers. Magic 
was already, by the great thinkers of Alexandria, 
conceived and practised, not as a mere Witchcraft, or 
supernatural Theurgy, but as a natural Science. 1 And 

1 See Vacherot, Histoire de VEcole d ' Alexandria, t. ii. pp. 146-8; and 
compare Maury, La Magie et V Astrologie, p. 91. 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



15 



we may, perhaps, find that there was no less of truth in 
its distinctive notion of universal Mutual Influence, than 
Faraday has acknowledged that there was in that notion 
of Transmutation 1 distinctive of Alchemy. 

Mr. Buckle expressed some interest in this hypo- 
thesis, but proceeded to justify the new Spiritist move- 
ment, and condemn the opposition to it of men of 
science, on grounds with which I could by no means 
agree. It seemed to me that among the causes of 
this revival of Spiritism were first, the prevalent ma- 
terialism of Philosophy. 4 Man cannot live by bread 
alone ; ' cannot live without the Ideal ; and the fit 
Idealism of a materialist age is this new Necromancy 
of Homianism. And another and correlative cause 
seemed to me to be the want of a theory truly recon- 
ciliative of Materialism and Idealism. Already, how- 
ever, the conception of Mind and Matter as correlative 
aspects of Force otherwise than in such an antithesis by 
us unknowable ; and hence, the conception of Nature 
as no less mental than material, is giving promise of 
such a reconciliation. And there is a third cause of the 
modern revival of Spiritism — a cause similar to that which 
was the intellectual determinant of Christianism itself 
— popular ignorance. 2 For consider how pernicious is 

1 ' There was a time when this fundamental doctrine of the 
alchemist's was opposed to known analogies. It is now no longer so 
opposed to them, only some stages beyond their present development.' — 
Lectures on the Non-Metallic Elements, p. 106. Compare Comte, Philo- 
sophie Positive, t. vi. p. 247. 

2 Compare the causes assigned by the author of the articles on 
Mesmerism in the Quarterly Revieiv, September, 1853, pp. 556-7; and 
on Spiritualism, in that of October, 1871, pp. 351-2. They amount 
in fact to this — defects in education, the removal of which would be 



16 



TIL GRIM-MEMO RIJES. 



Part I. 



the intellectual education given by Christianity. How 
could people brought up to believe it rank infidelity to 
question possession by devils, the ministration of angels, 
and the continuance to this day of miracles in that 
' saving grace ' of £ conversion,' which negatives natural 
psychological causation, and is itself so humourously 
negatived by the extreme naturalness of the conduct of 
Christians — how could people thus educated but be 
ready to accept a Spiritist theory of any new extraor- 
dinary phenomena ? And if many of those who have 
abandoned the theory of Spiritism respecting the old 
miracles, adopt it in explanation of the new super- 
naturalisms, this still proceeds from the spiritist creed 
of Christianity in which they have been educated. The 
spiritist theories of Christian sceptics are, indeed, but 
as sprouts from a tree of which the trunk has been 
sawn through, and the root left un extirpated. 

Nor could I think the modern opposition of Ne- 
cromancy and Orthodoxy at all singular. Our modern 
Homianists are but the puerile successors of the old 
Necromancers, Wizards, and Magicians. 1 To these Or- 
thodoxy has always been opposed. And we have an 
interesting illustration of this in the story of the Witch 
of Endor. For when Saul enquired of Yahveh, and 
Yahveh answered him not, neither by dreams, nor by 
vision, nor by prophets ; Saul said unto his servants, 
' Seek me a woman that hath a familiar spirit, that I 
may go to her and enquire of her.' There has been 
thus, speaking generally, always a rivalry between the 

the removal of the chief supports of belief in the miracles of Chris- 
tianism. 

1 Compare Littre, Medecine et Medecins — Des Tables parlantes, p. 75. 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



17 



wizard and the priest. 1 No doubt, the fundamental 
theory both of Witchcraft and Theology, is so far the 
same — that theory, namely, of Spirit-causes, or of the 
determination of events by Spirits, which is properly 
denoted by the name of Spiritism. But Spirits, con- 
ceived as Causes, may be imagined either regular or 
irregular in their action. And mark the difference in 
the consequences according as they are conceived in 
the one way, or in the other. If Spirit-causes are 
conceived as regular in their action, then there is a 
possibility of knowing, and if of knowing, then, of 
commanding them ; and thus Witchcraft in its attempt 
to command Nature, is really a beginning of Science. 
If, on the other hand, they are conceived as irregular 
in their action, then, one is entirely at their mercy, 
and one's only resource is sacrifice, invocation, and 
prayer ; and hence Theology is, in its fear of Nature, 
ever essentially Superstition. With reason, therefore, 
has the Theology of every age been opposed to the 
Witchcraft of the age, and the Witchcraft of every age 
to its Theology. The opposition, however, of Theo- 
logy to Witchcraft has not been opposition to an essen- 
tial theory, so much as to a presumedly impious aim 
To attempt to know and command supernatural powers, 
instead of contenting oneself with adoring and obey- 
ing — what could be more blasphemous ? 

But this our first, and indeed our last, discussion 

1 Compare Michelet, La Sorcib-e • see a recent work of Mr. Home's, 
narrating his Roman experiences ; and compare also Lyall On Witch- 
craft in Relation to the Non-Christian Religions — Fortnightly Review, 
April, 1873. 

C 



IS 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



on so-called 'Spiritualism' had now been prolonged 
to sunset, and the dinner-hour. So I rose to leave. But 
Mr. Buckle, enquiring what were my plans, and find- 
ing that the friends with whom I was then travelling 
were returning to England after the conclusion of our 
Nile-voyage, kindly urged me to decide on joining him 
in his proposed journey through Arabia and Syria. He 
had been wishing some one would attack him, c feeling 
very joyous, and altogether fall of pugnacity ; ' and I 
suppose he already saw in me one sufficiently admiring 
his genius, yet sufficiently opposed to his opinions, to 
give him the pleasant prospect of many a fair fight, 
should we travel together. I rather thought, however* 
of going direct to Jerusalem by Jaffa, and postponed a 
decision till we should meet again at Cairo. In the 
meantime, he accepted an invitation to a party we were 
giving that evening on board our dahabeah. And so, 
till after dinner, I bade him adieu. 

In the evening, examination of curiosities, and talk 
over incidents of travel, amused and occupied most 
of our guests, amid the fragrant fumes of tchibouques, 
and the refreshments of coffee and claret-cup. But 
there was fortunately in the party a German Protes- 
tant clergyman, — whom, as he will hereafter appear 
in our narrative, we may name, the Eev. Mr. Gottlob, 
— and with him Mr. Buckle discussed such more ab- 
struse subjects as the Cogito ergo sum of Descartes, 
finally overwhelming him with the history of Induc- 
tion, from the iiraycoytf of Aristotle, to the instantia 
crucis of Bacon, and the ' System of Logic ' of Mill. 
Under the stars at length we parted, our guests step- 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



19 



ping from our boat to the sands, and thence walking 
to their respective dahabeahs. 

Early next morning, looking out of the window, 
as I lay in my berth, Mr. Buckle's boat swept past, 
bound for Boulak again, her crew at the oars in 
full chorus. And it appeared to me altogether a 
strange adventure ; strange, this meeting at the Gate 
of Ethiopia with a recluse student whom I had only 
once previously seen, and that in London, and under 
circumstances so different ; and still more strange, that, 
without any conscious link of association with the place, 
the chief subject of our conversation at this frontier- 
town between Egypt and Ethiopia, the immemorial 
lands of the Black Art, 1 should have happened to 
be — Modern Necromancy. And yet, as I afterwards 
reflected, if the vulgar theory of Homian phenomena 
is, as I maintained, but a modern revival of the primi- 
tive philosophy of Spiritism, our discussions in the 
birth-countries of Christianity could hardly have begun 
with a subject more fundamental. 

For, excepting such phenomena as may possibly 
require such an extension of the theory of Mutual 
Influence, as that above suggested, modern spiritist 
stories are to be explained either as mere ficticns, or 
as records of phenomena which had but a subjective 
reality. The former explanation is founded on the fact 
of the myth-creative activity of the undisciplined human 
imagination. The latter explanation is based on those 

1 "Dakkeh, a little further up the Nile, was the stronghold of Ethio- 
pian magic, and there the ruins of a temple are still found where Tris- 
megistus was worshipped. 

c 2 



20 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



various classes of facts, which may be generalised into 
this one great fact, that Subjective Causes produce phe- 
nomena which, by the uninstructed mind, may reasonably 
be attributed to Objective Causes. It is impossible logi- 
cally to limit the domain within which these two great 
facts are to be applied to the explanation of miraculous 
and spiritist stories — impossible logically to say you 
may thus explain the marvels of Witchcraft, ancient or 
modern, but not those of Theology. Nor only so, but 
the origin of that belief in Spirits common to both is 
thus explained. This explanation of the origin, is a 
refutation of the validity of the belief. And hence, 
although, in the further investigation of Homian phe- 
nomena, there may be a possibility of discovering 
important new physio-psychological facts ; it is the 
discussion of the vulgar theory of these phenomena 
that is at present chiefly of importance ; because of 
the light which the facts that refute it throw on the 
nature and origin of supernatural Gods, and hence, not 
of Christian beliefs only, but of all theological beliefs 
whatever. 

About ten o'clock in the forenoon of the day that 
Mr. Buckle returned northward, ' La Nina ' spread her 
winglike sails, like the swallow flying south, and stood 
up the Nile. Soon after, came the magnificent tumult 
of the ascent of the First Cataract. Three other boats, 
including that of my countryman the friend of the 
Yiceroy, left along with ours. And as — Scotsmen being 
always shoulder to shoulder abroad — we had the assist- 
ance of the couple of hundred men who had been im- 
pressed for his service by the Governor of Asouan, 



Chap. I. THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 21 



our boat was towed up iu splendid style. It was a 
glorious struggle of Man with Nature, of animate with 
inanimate forces — a multitude of naked savages equally 
at home on land and water, and with no machines but 
their own legs and arms, hauling and yelling against 
the rush and roar of a mighty cataract. Still grander, 
however, was the shooting of this First Cataract, on 
our descending the Nile three weeks afterwards. Some 
travellers do not risk it ; nor, I believe, did Mr. Buckle ; 
but I found it one of the most glorious sensations I 
ever experienced. And, as illustrative of the interest 
of this voyage into Nubia, of which Mr. Buckle wrote 
as having been fi in the highest degree curious and in- 
structive,' and such that he ' would not have missed it for 
500/.,' — an interest of scenery and manners, besides the 
profound historic interest of such temples as that of 
Abou-Simbel, — I may, perhaps, be permitted to give 
the following sketch of my own in Ethiopia, drawn 
on the spot, and now extracted from a letter to my 
mother : — 

' About half-past five o'clock in the afternoon, stop- 
ping the trackers, I jumped on shore, sprang up the 
steep mud-bank, through the narrow strips of barley, 
lupins, and castor-oil plants, and found myself, not 
among either tobacco or cotton plantations, but at once 
in the desert. Before one of a number of irregularly- 
scattered, low, mud-walled, flat-roofed, straw-thatched 
hovels, forming a village at two or three minutes' dis- 
tance from the edge of the bank, I spied two of the 
Baronet's party, with their Dragoman, bargaining about 
a sheep. I joined them, and inspected the Ethiopians. 



22 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



The group, my friends were surrounded by, were chiefly 
the elders of the village, particularly ugly and savage- 
looking, though good enough natured. The children 
naked, the bigger girls with a bead-embroidered thong 
round their loins, from which hung short strips of lea- 
ther. The women in very scanty robes ; their hair in 
the famous Numidiaii curl, long, thin, and innume- 
rable ; and with tiaras, necklaces, and bracelets of co- 
loured beads. A little way in the village, I thought I 
saw a bint who pleased me better ; but as I approached 
her, sitting on the ground kneading bread, she threw 
part of her robe, which had fallen on the ground, 
across her bosom, leaving, however, exposed two finely- 
shaped braceleted arms ; and to the few complimen- 
tary words my Arabic afforded, smiled with very black 
eyes, and very white teeth. 

e Leaving her, and bestowing a small baksheesh on a 
white-headed, white-bearded Ethiop, we passed through 
some cattle, sheep, and goats, ruminating on the shady 
side of sun-covers composed of bundles of long straw 
set on end, and got-out on the hovel-unencumbered 
desert. Away it stretched, the sandy sea, surrounding 
a sakiyah-watered oasis of green crops, a veritable 
island behind the village. But at a space of but two 
or three miles, though that was greater than usual, a 
wild, irregularly- shaped, suddenly-uprising range of 
brown sandstone hills, towards the west and north, 
bounded the horizon. On the other side of these, 
however, the Sahara, as we call it, and which means 
literally the desert, stretched limitless. Here it was 
that the army of Cambyses was overwhelmed by the 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



23 



drifting sands, and here that the more fortunate legions 
of Petronius advanced against Candace, Queen of the 
Ethiopians. 

c But the sun in indescribable magnificence is sink- 
ing into the desert. Passing the skeleton of a camel, 
we walk on for half-a-mile or so, our feet sinking very 
fatiguingly in the sands, till we get above where our 
clahabeahs have moored, and then, the Baronet's party 
dining at six o'clock, and we, not till half-past six, 
being left alone, I sink down on the sands and gaze. 
On one side is the desert I have described, on the 
other, flowing under the steep bank, is the Mle, reflect 
ing on its calm surface the tints of sunset, and shadowed 
by the bold outlines of the sandstone mountains which 
rise steeply up from its further shore, and have the 
summit of their loftiest cliff, Ibreem, just opposite me, 
crowned by the ruins of an advanced post of the 
Eomans. Above all — desert and rocky mountains — 
the indescribable down-going of the sun. Eapt in 
such a scene one cannot distinctly think. Yet impres- 
sions are received which will probably more or less 
affect all one's future thought. Now, however, I must 
descend the bank to dinner. 

' While discussing our date-and-fig dessert, we ob- 
serve Mohammed, through the open cabin-door, in a 
state of great excitement, lighting up a dozen extra 
lanterns ; and suddenly from the boat a-head rises up 
into the still air a wild Arab song with its drum and 
tambourine accompaniment. It seems they are having 
a fantasia, and Mohammed is determined to outshine 
them in lanterns. And when they fire guns, and we 



24 



RIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet L 



refuse to let him fire ours, because they happen to be 
all loaded with heavy shot, and he is too excited, he 
gets still more raised, and declares himself ready to 
take the chance of blowing off his own head, rather 
than not fire and outdo them. Going to visit our 
friends to see what is up, we meet Sir Capel on the 
bank coming to ask us to join them ; and find that it 
is all because he had given his crew a bottle of brandy, 
and some meat for dinner. Between a double row of 
lanterns and across a plank, we pass to the deck of his 
dahabeah. Before us ? seated outside the cabin-door, 
the scene was very singular and very interesting. 
From the circle of men seated on the deck under the 
rope-swung lanterns, and pole-supported torches, one 
after another rose up to dance, while the rest sang in 
chorus wild songs to Allah, and to their far-distant 
wives and sweethearts, beating at the same time a 
drum, or striking a tambourine, or, if these failed, 
accompanying themselves at least with clapping of 
hands. It was all very broadly indeed comic, and im- 
mensely delighted not only the singers, but the more 
dignified officials, the first and second Keis, or Captain 
and Mate as we should say, the Dragoman, and the 
Cook ; on whom, joined by our own men and witness- 
ing the scene from the bank, the flaming torches and 
many- coloured lamps, cast light enough to bring out 
all the Oriental hues of their garments. 

4 The dances were various. We had first one simi- 
lar in its movements and meaning to that danced by the 
Ghawazee, and Almeh. After that, the dancer took 
off one piece of his clothes after another, and went 



Chap. I. 



THE GATE OF ETHIOPIA. 



25 



dancing round the circle, pretending to offer them for 
sale, but no one bid high enough. Again, putting his 
face into the strangest contortions, and having it 
powdered with flour, he still kept time in all sorts of 
attitudes, now crippling about, then on his hunkers, (if 
this is English, and not Broad-Scotch), then heels over 
head. At last, and as usual, at the conclusion of the 
dances both of men and of women, when "the fun 
waxed fast and furious," calling out " Nachlia ho ! 
Nachlia ho ! " and pretending a bee had stung him, lie 
searched all over for it, and finally, to find it, threw off 
every remaining rag. This was, of course, checked ; 
and at that moment the breeze sprang up ; the dance 
was over; the guests departed; the lanterns were 
blown out ; the torches quenched in water ; the sails 
of both boats were let fall ; gently they filled with the 
breeze ; and over the vast stillness rose, in majestic 
splendour, the^full moon of the Tropics.' 



26 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



CHAPTEE H. 

THE NILE-OASIS. 

It was not till six weeks after our first meeting at 
Syene that I saw Mr. Buckle again, and decided on 
accepting his kind proposal to join him for the rest of 
his Eastern journey. But before meeting him again at 
Cairo, it will, for our main purpose, be desirable briefly 
to indicate, at least, some of the more important im- 
pressions received from travel in the Mle-oasis. And 
here also may, perhaps, best be given some extracts 
from Mr. Buckle's Nile-letters. 

From Alexandria, on his arrival in Egypt, Mr. Buckle 
wrote on the 5th of November : — ' I feel in better health 
and spirits than at any time during the last three years. 
Especially I am conscious of an immense increase of 
brain-power — grasping great problems with a firmness 
which at one time I feared had gone from me for ever. 
I feel that there is yet much that I shall live to do. . . . 
Tobacco and pipes are very cheap ; everything else is 
enormously dear : ale, two shillings a bottle ; soda- 
water, one shilling ; miserable carriages, five shillings 
an hour, and so forth ; and yet, with all this, the labour- 
market in such a state that an unskilled labourer 
earns with difficulty twopence a day — wages low, and 
profits high. . . . Good-bye. My thoughts are often 



Chap. II. 



THE NILE-OASIS. 



■27 



with those I have left behind. Write to Mrs. G 

and Mrs. B , and tell them that I asked you to let 

them hear of our safe arrival.' 

Again, from Cairo, on the 1,5th of November : — 
4 . . . We hope to leave here for Thebes to-morrow, 
provided the boat can be got provisioned by then. It 
is a first-rate boat, and as we shall be in it three 
months, I am doing what I know you would be doing 
if you were here — sparing no expense in laying-in 
every comfort that can ensure health. I feel the re- 
sponsibility of your dear children perhaps more than 
I expected, but I am not anxious, for I am conscious of 
going to the full extent of my duty and neglecting 
nothing ; and when a man does this he must leave the 
unknown and invisible future to take care of itself. 
... If the boys improve still further in health, and if 
I find that they are reaping real intellectual benefit, I 
purpose taking them, in February, to Jerusalem, and 
thence making excursions in Palestine, explaining to 
them at the same time the essential points in Jewish 
history, and connecting it with the history of Egypt. 
The few books which I require can all be got here, all 
except one, viz. Stanley's 4 Sinai and Palestine.' This 
you will please to get and send to Briggs at Cairo. . . . 
I shall have the best escort that money can procure. 
My maxim is economy, not parsimony ; and though I 
never throw away money, I never spare it on emergencies. 
If in the spring there are any disturbances in Arabia 
or Syria, be you well assured that I shall not set foot 
there. ... As I know some influential persons, and 
amongst them a Pasha and a Bey, I shall have the best 



28 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



information as to what is going on in the countries 
through which we are to pass. Full of life and thought. 
How this country makes me speculate ! I am up at six 
o'clock every morning, and yet there seems no day, so 
much is there to see and to think of. I try to pour 
some of my overflowings into the little chaps [the sons 
of the friend to whom the letter was addressed]. 
Beyond Thebes there is no post, and even from Thebes 
the post is precarious. Do not, therefore, be uneasy at 
not hearing from us. I know that you put some confi- 
dence in my judgment ; and my judgment, and whatever 
I know, will be taxed to the utmost to preserve the 
health of your children.' 

In a letter dated the Nile, 14th December, Mr. 
Buckle writes : — ' We have been, and still are, quite 
well. The journey up the Nile, though slow, has not 
been dull, as we have plenty of occupation. . . . Lest 
the long confinement should be injurious, I stop the 
boat twice every day, and we walk with an escort on 
the shore. Then, and in the evening, I talk to the boys 
about what they have seen and read, and having en- 
couraged them to state their opinion, I give them 
mine, and explain how it is that we differ. . . . We 
live in quiet comfort, and indeed luxury. An iron 
boat with good bedrooms, and a saloon that could 
dine eight persons ; and we sail quicker than any other 
boat on the Nile. I have engaged the cook the 
Eothschilds had when they were in Egypt. He is 
really a first-rate cook, and makes, I think, the best 
bread I ever tasted. I shall take him on to Jerusalem, 
as I will not trust our digestion to common Arab cook- 



Chap. IT. 



THE NILE-OASIS. 



20 



ing. At Cairo I shall buy pistols for him and the 
dragoman ; and this, with our escort and my revolver, 
will enable us to set ordinary robbers at defiance. And 
as to extraordinary ones, I shall never enter any dis- 
trict where there is war between the tribes. Trust me 
yet a little and you will not be disappointed.' 

' Full of life and thought. How this country makes 
me speculate ! Up at six o'clock every morning, and 
yet there seems no day, so much is there to see and to 
think of.' These are, perhaps, the most vividly true 
words in all Mr. Buckle's letters from Egypt. Let me 
try briefly to indicate with how good reason he might 
thus express himself. 

First of all, there is, in Egypt, brought home to us 
a fact which alone, if it is fully realised, changes our 
ordinary conceptions of the history of Humanity almost 
as much as realisation of the fact, by geology revealed, 
of the countless ages of Man's existence antecedent to 
the formation of civilised States. This fact that, in 
Egypt, we thus realise, is that of an Age of Civilisation, 
milleniums long, the close of which was antecedent to 
all that we ordinarily talk of as Ancient History. What 
henceforth we can name 4 Ancient History ' is put-back 
thousands of years. And Modern History means 
for us henceforth those two milleniums and a half 
nearly since the upbreak, about the Sixth Century 
B.C., of those civilisations of the Indus-, Euphrates-, and 
Nile-valleys, which would appear to have had approxi- 
mately synchronous origins about 5,000 B.C. One in- 
ference, however, only from this fact need here be 
noted — this, that annalists and litterateurs, who occupy 



30 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



themselves with but a few recent decades or centuries, 
will probably, both by their turn of mind, and the 
results of its activity, be incapacitated for a due under- 
standing of even the meaning of the word History ; 
and further, that if one would discover an Ultimate 
Law of History, one must take a view of it extending 
over Cycles of Ages, and Ages of Milleniums. 

Secondly, all, and more than all, that Mr. Buckle 
has said of the fatality of Physical Conditions in what, 
in Egypt, we learn to call the First Age of Humanity, 
or First Age of Civilisation, is, in the Mle-oasis, seen as 
actual visible fact. For seeing the richness of the Soil 
and the beneficence of the Climate, — and in the two 
other chief seats of the first origin of Civilisation, 
Soil and Climate were equally propitious, — seeing this, 
the fatality is also seen of the sequences which led to 
the whole organisation of Society in this First Age, 
and particularly, its distinctive features of a wealthy, 
leisured, and learned upper class, and a vast, ignorant, 
and oppressed lower class. Man, indeed, through 
that foresight and command of Nature given by Sci- 
ence, becomes, but he is not born, free. For the Soil 
and Climate gave food-yielding plants of immense pro- 
ductiveness — the palm, especially, and the dhourra. 
But from this superabundance of food came a super- 
abundance of population. From this, however, again, 
came an overcrowded labour-market. From this, a low 
rate of wages. From this, an unequal distribution of 
wealth. From this, an unequal share of leisure, and un- 
equal acquisition, and diffusion of knowledge. From this, 
an unequal distribution of power. From this, finally, 



i 



Chap. II. THE NILE-OASIS. 31 

all those means of oppression, priestly and military, 
which caused that social state to be established which 
had by Nature been initiated. For the origin of it all 
we thus see in that ironic bounty of Nature which 
maleficently encouraged the population to overstock 
the labour-market against themselves. All this has 
been admirably pointed-out by Mr. Buckle. But I 
would further maintain that, not only such surface- 
facts as these, but the root-fact of all, — the character of 
the primitive conception of Causation, the conception 
of Causes as Spirits, the conception of Causation as a 
One-sided Determination, — is determined indirectly, at. 
least, by the Powers of Nature, being due to an igno- 
rance of the true relations of phenomena which resulted 
from the economical effects of Physical Conditions. 

If so, however, then the whole Spirit-world of 
primitive religions, and the whole system, more par- 
ticularly, of the doctrines of Osirianism, has no diviner 
sanction than the labour-driven ignorance, and priest- 
ridden servility which — resulting from the economical 
conditions under which mental spontaneities originally 
worked — led to what were but the mere subjective fic- 
tions of the myth-creating imagination being taken for 
objective realities. But, as the third and central im- 
pression of travel in the Nile-valley, must be noted 
that of the extraordinary similarity of the doctrines of 
Osirianism to those of Christianism ; a similarity such 
that, substitute but Christ for Osiris, and the general 
description of doctrinal Osirianism will serve equal] y 
well as a general description of dogmatic Christianism ; 
and a similarity that is brought home to one in sculp- 



32 PILGRIM-MEMORIES. Part I. 

tures and frescoes which, though centuries, or even 
milleniunis, older than Christianity, represent all its 
main doctrines. But, if the Christian dogmas of the 
Trinity, Incarnation, and Other- world, are in any way 
to be derived from the myths of Osirianism, or gene- 
rally, of JSTaturianism ; they had in these myths but 
their proximate origin ; and their ultimate origin must 
have been identical with what we have seen to be the 
origin of these myths, namely, those base conditions 
of ignorance in which originated primitive spiritist 
conceptions. 

Fourthly, when we see with how sublime, and 
inexpressibly impressive an art the great doctrines of 
Osirianism are represented in sculpture and in fresco ; 
and reflect that Egypt was no isolated river-valley, no 
remote desert-oasis, but the home of a great conquering 
and imperial people, whose triumphal inscriptions are 
still extant even in the far Lebanon, 1 and whose ideas 
were more or less diffused over the whole Mediterra- 
nean East ; we see also that it would have been 
just as impossible that the thought-atmosphere of Osi- 
rianism should not have exercised the most important 
effect on the doctrinal form of any such new movement 
as Christianity, — just as impossible as that an Egyptian 
sky, with its serene light and heat, should not exercise 
important effects on any new vegetable- or animal- 
species subjected to its influence. Contemplating the 
grandly symbolic art of Osirianism, its sculptures par- 

1 At the Nahr-el-Kelb. These inscriptions, according to Lepsius, 
hear the cartouches of Remeses the Great, the Sesostris of Herodotus, 
and Pharaoh of the Israelite Exodus of the 14th century B.C. 



Chap. II. 



THE NILE-OASIS. 



33 



ticularly, we see that no new creed, originating in the 
Mediterranean East, could have escaped having its 
whole external form, and hence much also of its spirit, 
determined by Gods of such sublimity as these. These 
colossal Gods are thus seen to have a quite new reality 
and interest. Their serene smile of majestic power is 
the smile of power that has, in the most real historical 
fashion possible, been exercised. But for them, and 
the myths which they embody, we should not now be 
Christians. 

But yet another profound impression of travel in 
the Nile-oasis must be noted. So quickened, in Egypt, 
is sympathetic insight, that, in the Gods, we see the 
Men who created them. In the colossal beauty on 
which we look, whether it image Eemeses or Osiris, it 
is not images of supernatural Gods that we see, but of 
Men, our brethren ; Men who, wherever their em- 
balmed bodies may be, have known how, in the 
creation of Gods, to clothe their souls with immor- 
tality ; Men who have so shaped all that was highest 
and noblest in their own souls, and in those of their 
people, that, as themselves Gods, they should elevate 
and ennoble the latest generations of those capable of 
communion with them, as brethren, though Gods. But 
that really Ancient History, that First Age of Humanity 
which is the first thing we learn, in Egypt, to recog- 
nise, is thus, not intellectually seen only, but sympa- 
thetically realised. For, seeing in the Gods the Men 
who created them, we see in them images of human 
thought, emotion, and aspiration in that far First Age, 
and are thus brought into communion with the men 

D 



34 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. Part I. 



of that time, as with immortal spirits whom we may 
still, even with the bodily eye, behold. And see- 
ing thus what the Gods of Humanity are, and have 
been, — Ideals in which the souls of their creators live 
immortal ; — and that those Wants which have found 
their satisfaction in the creation of such Ideals as the 
Gods, are Wants that stir also in ourselves ; the one- 
ness of all life with our own, and of our own life with 
that of all, is felt with an inexpressible emotion. 

What the impressions and speculations were to 
which Mr. Buckle refers as having, in Egypt, filled his 
days with such pleasure, and made them pass with 
such rapidity, I do not know. But certainly those I 
have thus briefly noted would go to the utter over- 
throwal of his two most characteristic affirmations. 
These, as the reader may remember, were, that a 
great division between European Civilisation and Non- 
European Civilisation is the basis of the Philosophy of 
History ; 1 and that Moral Forces, though important in 
the case of the individual, are of no effect as historical 
causes. But as to the former, the first and last thing, 
as it seemed to me, that Egypt, of all countries in the 
w 7 orld, was fitted to convince one of, was the continuity 
of European with Non-European Civilisation ; revealing 
as it does in the Christ-contemporary Osirian, and gene- 
rally Heathen, mythology, one of the most important 
causes of the formation of those doctrines which still 
constitute the creed of the West. And as to the latter, 
though sight of the Soil of Egypt might force one to 

1 History of Civilisation, vol. i. pp. 38-9 ; compare Littre, in a 
review of Mr. Buckle's work, in La Philosophie positive, t. ii. p. 65. 



Chap. II. 



THE NILE-OASIS. 



35 



admit all, and more than all contended for by Mr. Buckle 
as to the influence of Physical Conditions ; yet sight of 
the Gods of Egypt had on me, at least, the effect of 
making incredible their creation without a much larger 
and more general conception of Moral Forces than that 
apparently formed by Mr. Buckle ; and without allowing 
to such Forces an efficacy and an importance as histori- 
cal causes at least equal to that of Physical Conditions. 

Of Mr. Buckle's voyage up the river we have the 
following rather characteristic anecdote from the tra- 
veller whose ' Eeminiscences ' I have already alluded to. 
' Shortly after passing Gizeh, we came to a Mussulman 
saint sitting very nearly in puris naturalihis, beside a 
fire on the river-bank, where, it was alleged, he had 
sat, without ever entering a house, for fifteen years. 
It is the custom for all the boats ascending the river to 
stop and pay a visit to this holy man and bestow some 
baksheesh upon him. The iron boat [Mr. Buckle's] 
was a short way ahead, and we were all curiosity to 
see what Mr. Buckle would do. He never shifted his 
course for a moment, and paid his contributions to 
Sheykh Selim with a flowing sheet. Anything else he 
would doubtless have considered as yielding too much 
to that clerical influence he so much deprecated.' 1 

Neither, however, did we pay a visit to Sheykh 
Selim on our voyage up the river, though we did so on 
our return. And this visit was to me so interesting, 
and brought home so impressively certain important 
historical facts, that, missed though it appears to have 

1 Reminiscences of Mr. Buckle, by J. A. Longmore — Athenceum, 
1873, p. 114. 

d 2 



36 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



been by Mr. Buckle, I cannot refrain from giving some 
brief account of the adventure. It was the day after 
one which we had spent in a less grave manner than 
usual at a Fair near Keneh — a Fair at which a dead 
Saint is honoured, and kept in memory, with a wonder- 
ful variety of living unsaintlinesses — it was the day 
after this Holy Fair, that our dragoman begged leave 
to go and present an offering to this saint still in life — 
the miracle-working Sheykh Selim. We accompanied 
him, and found seated on the bank above the river, a 
stark-naked and dirty man, silent, and gazing ab- 
stractedly. His head and face were very remarkable, 
covered with long tangled hair, the features wholly 
unlike what one usually saw, and reminding one, some- 
what, in their ugliness yet thoughtfulness, of the busts 
of Socrates. Mohammed presented his offering through 
one of the Sheykh's attendants. But he seemed to take 
little or no notice of it, or of the arrival of our party 
in front of him. For the Shereef, they said, regarded 
Allah. I was looking at him with many thoughts of 
old Christian Hermits, and Indian Fakeers, and others 
who have felt, and it may be extravagantly expressed 
— but how else was it to be expressed ? — their sense of 
the wonder and mystery of existence, and the pettiness 
of the life about them. Suddenly the Sheykh looked 
up ; our eyes met ; and he muttered some words with 
respect to me which were listened to as revelations 
and prophecies, and were, no doubt, therefore, inter- 
preted to me inaccurately. 

But I could not agree with my friends, the P— — 's, 
in considering this holy Shereef as but a lazy vagabond, 



Chap. II. 



THE NILE- OASIS. 



07 



and mischievous impostor, whom at home they would, 
as magistrates, have justly consigned to prison. No 
doubt the selfish forces of our nature account for much. 
But religious phenomena especially are utterly inex- 
plicable without the hypothesis of other equally primi- 
tive, and equally powerful, though but fitfully acting 
forces. And, in the case of this Sheykh Selim, it was 
particularly difficult to see what considerable selfish 
advantage he had in renouncing the world. He was a 
man, we were told, of great wealth, almost all spent in 
charity ; for he was without wife or hareem, and of the 
most frugal habits, living on vegetables and fruits, and 
drinking only water. Though he seemed to be almost 
worshipped when, as on this occasion, he happened to 
be in the neighbourhood of his native village, yet he 
stayed very little there, wandering about in solitude. 
And though living, to narrow civilised notions, so mad 
a life, there was too much shrewdness in his eye, and 
quietude in his air, to permit one to imagine him 
merely a madman. 

Yet whatever was the true character of this man, 
the sight of him was instructive, not only in making 
one consider those deep forces, those profound wants, 
which find, and for ever will find their satisfaction only 
in religious observances and contemplations ; but also, 
and chiefly, in presenting to eye and ear the very pro- 
cess of the origin of the legends of the Saints and Gods. 
For our dragoman related to us, with the most perfect 
good-faith, and belief, a whoie cycle of legends which 
had already sprung-up, in his lifetime, about Sheykh 
Selim. And it was remarkable to observe that, with 



38 



P1L GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



respect to this reputed holy man, it was miracle, not 
natural causation, that was taken for granted. We re- 
quire miracle to be proved. Mohammed required it to 
be disproved. The medical cures wrought by the Sheykh 
were, of course, miracles. His shrewd sayings were, 
of course, revelations, or prophecies. When he was 
found alone on the mountains on the other side of the 
Nile, he had, of course, walked over the water. When 
pilgrims reported they had seen him at Mecca, the very 
day he had been seen at another place a thousand miles 
off, it was, he of course, at both places who had been 
seen. And so on. 

And yet our dragoman was, comparatively, an edu- 
cated man. He had travelled a great deal, and could 
make himself, at least, understood in two or three lan- 
guages besides his own. One must, indeed, in con- 
sidering the state of mind of the narrators of such 
legends as those of Sheykh Selim, compare with these 
legends the other tales they delight in, and the general 
life- views therefrom resulting ; and this, just as in 
considering the credibility of the most honest witness 
to a reputed miracle, one examines the contemporary 
literature in order to judge of the general superstitious 
or scientific character of the time. Yet, Arabian as 
had been the Nights' Entertainments ; extraordinary^ 
the Tales of the Source of the Nile, of the Abys- 
sinian Man-Crocodile, of the Two Magicians, of the 
Lovers of Phike, &c, which Mohammed had some- 
times stood, and amused us with, as we lay smoking 
our tchibouques on the divan after dinner, it had hardly 



Chap. II. 



THE KILE- OASIS. 



39 



prepared me to hear him speak with such confidence 
of the miraculous attributes of this Sheykh. For these 
tales were narrated with but a faint belief in their pos- 
sibility as facts ; while he very practically showed his 
faith in Sheykh Selim by the gifts he took every oppor- 
tunity of presenting to the Shereef, or his occasional 
attendants ; and by his being moved by our doubts, 
only as any other orthodox believer might be moved 
by the impiety of infidels. 

Nor was it only the very process of the origin of the 
legends of the Saints and Gods that was presented to eye 
and ear in these miracle-stories of Mohammed's about 
Sheykh Selim, but the argument against miracles was 
thus brought home to one with a force and vividness 
never to be forgotten. That argument consists simply 
in the fact that, in certain stages of culture, stories of 
miraculous powers are naturally, and as a matter of 
course, narrated of any person whose character is such 
as to produce a strong impression on the popular 
imagination. Or, to put it more shortly, the argument 
against miracles, thus brought home to us in this 
adventure with Sheykh Selim, consists in the fact that 
Narratives of Miracle are records, not of actual facts of 
Nature, but of uncultured states of Mind. 

But by the pressing home of such a fact as this, a 
mine is driven under the very foundations of the 
Christian Faith. For what escape can there then be 
from the conclusion that the Gospel-miracles are but 
the natural fictions which it would be miraculous did 
we not find in the fond narratives of such persons as 



40 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt I. 



the notoriously ignorant and superstitious Galilseans, 
the chief disciples of the Prophet of Nazareth ? Let us 
briefly glance at the attempts which have been made 
by the Christian defenders of the c Chatel Merveil ' to 
ward off, or counteract the terribly mining and ex- 
plosive force of that great argument driven home by 
the engineering arm of the hosts of Science. 

The Gospels must be believed because they are self- 
consistent and contemporary narratives. 

But even were that true, they could not be thus 
saved from the application to them of that great in- 
duction which condemns all miraculous narratives as 
fictions. But this affirmation with respect to the 
Gospels is not true. They are neither self-consistent, 
nor are they even near being contemporary narratives. 

Well then, if this must be admitted, the life they set 
forth is, in its main incidents, of so singular and 
extraordinary a character, as to warrant our believing 
it to be no fiction. 

But neither is this true. The life of Jesus as that 
of a God-Man who came on earth for the good of man- 
kind, was put to death by the power of the Evil One, 
and rose again to be an everlasting King and Judge, is 
an exact reproduction of the immemorial myth of 
Osiris. And this myth, not only in its grandly moral 
Osirian form, but in many other shapes, was universally 
prevalent throughout the birth-countries of Christianity 
at the time of the formation of the narratives of the 
life of Jesus. 

Let even this be admitted, the morality and ethical 
tone of the Gospels, and indeed, of the New Testament 



Chap. II. 



THE NILE-OASIS. 



41 



generally, is such as to be alone sufficient evidence of 
their, and its, super naturally divine character. 

But this affirmation with respect to the Gospels is 
also not true. The disproof of it is in many works of 
the contemporary and antecedent Classical and Oriental 
literatures. And Christianity, even in its moral aspect, 
appears as but the Western culmination and flower of 
that great Ee volution which, five centuries before Chris- 
tianity, gave birth, among its other products, to the 
equally moral, though atheistic, religion of Buddhism. 

It were wholly irrelevant to the scope and pur- 
pose of this mere Procemiwn here to develope these 
arguments against, or rather to illustrate these facts 
subversive of, the popular belief in Christianity. But 
it is not irrelevant thus briefly to state them. On the 
contrary, I consider it a duty both to Mr. Buckle 
and to myself to take the earliest opportunity thus 
to indicate those facts which made Christian beliefs im- 
possible for us — and even more impossible in the birth- 
countries of Christianity than ever at home. In these 
facts is the defence — I will not say of our 6 infidelity,' 
for that usually implies a negation of all religious belief, 
and the Humanitarian, (as I, at least, conceive it), is quite 
as positive a creed as the Christian, — not, then, of our 
general ' infidelity,' but of our special Christian incre- 
dulity. And, — particularly if taken in conjunction with 
those other facts which travel in Egypt so vividly brings 
home to one, — only childish unintelligence, or gross dis- 
honesty, can make light of the immense gravity and im- 
portance of these last-stated facts — the immense gravity 
and importance of the great inductive generalisation as 



42 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



to the nature of miraculous narratives ; and the immense 
gravity and importance of the three great facts, or 
rather classes of facts, which make it appear impossible 
to treat the Gospel narratives as exceptions to that 
generalisation. 

Missed, then, though this adventure with Sheykh 
Selim seems to have been by Mr. Buckle, I think he 
would have found it more interesting and instructive 
than he imagined. For, just as the actual sight of 
sculptures, hundreds or even thousands of years older 
than Christianity, and yet illustrating mythical doctrines 
exactly similar to those of Christianity, brought home 
to one with a new force the already known fact of the 
existence of such doctrines in Heathenism, and hence, 
the fact of the heathenism of Christianity ; and just as 
reading, amid all the impressions of the Orient, the trans- 
lations, now accessible, of Oriental literatures brought 
home with a new force the already known fact that 
there is nothing in the morality of the Christian Scrip- 
tures different in kind, or even very different in degree, 
from that elsewhere to be found, and hence the fact of 
the naturalness, even in its highest aspect, of Christi- 
anity; so, the sight of this Eastern saint, and the hearing 
of the miraculous narratives already in his lifetime in 
circulation about him, brought home with a force and 
vividness never to be forgotten that fundamental ar- 
gument against Christianism which no one with any 
competent knowledge of Biblical criticism, of heathen, 
and particularly Osirian mythology, and of Oriental, 
and particularly Buddhistic, literature, has yet dared to 
face. And it is, indeed, tins power it has of bringing 



Chap. II. 



THE NILE-OASIS. 



43 



home to one facts that makes Travel, to the true student 
of History, indispensable as what I may call a Subjective 
Experimental Method. 

Of the date of the 5th of February, after his return 
to Cairo, we have a letter of Mr. Buckle's to the lady, 
the mother of the boys who were travelling with him, 
which, though little is said in it of Egypt, is so pleasingly 
illustrative of the better side of his character that some 
extracts from it will not, I trust, be thought irrelevant. 

4 I cannot understand how it is that you were so 
long in receiving the letter which I wrote from Thebes in 
the middle of December. On returning from Nubia, we 
wrote again from Thebes about the 17th of January, and 
in these, as in every other instance, I have made a point 
of posting your letters myself. I do not wonder at 
your anxiety at being so long without intelligence ; but I 
have done all in my power, and have never, since we 
left England, allowed a post to go-by without writing. 
Your picture of your imagination of my hanging over 
the bed of a sick boy, and bringing you back a child 
the less, has gone to my very heart, and made me 
feel quite miserable, since I know what must have 
passed through your mind, and what you must have 
suffered, before you could write thus. But why, dear 

Mrs. H , why will you allow your imagination to 

be led captive by such dark imaginings ? I never begin 
any considerable enterprise without well weighing 
the objections against it. In taking your children 
where I have taken them, and where they are about to 
go, I have estimated the difficulties, or if you will the 
dangers. . . , Here, as elsewhere, some rare combi- 



44 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



nation of events, or some insidious physical action 
creeping unobserved through the human frame, and 
stealthily coming on years before, may prostrate one of 
your boys, as it may prostrate you, or your husband. 
This may happen in the healthiest climate, and in spite 
of the teuderest care. . . . The excitement of the brain 
caused by travelling amid the scenes through which they 
pass is in itself a source of health ; and though you of 
course love your children better than I do, and better 
indeed than anyone does — for who knows so well as I 
that no love can equal the love of a mother ? — still even 
you could not watch them more carefully than I do ; 
and, as you would be the first to acknowledge, you 
would watch them with less knowledge both of what 
should be guarded against, and what should be done. 
.... We have anchored about a mile and a half from 
Cairo, as I think living on the Nile more healthy than 
being in an hotel. I shall therefore keep on the boat 
and all my establishment, including my virtuous and 
noble-minded cook, until we start for the Desert. As to 
Oookey, he and I will never part till the Asiatic part of 
the journey is ended.' 

In a letter to another friend, dated the 7th of Feb- 
ruary, Mr. Buckle writes : — 4 We have returned to Cairo, 
all quite well, after a most interesting journey to the 
southern extremity of Egypt, and on into Nubia, as far 
as the Second Cataract. I feel better and stronger than 
I have done for years.' In about ten days we leave here 
for Mount Sinai, and intend proceeding through the 
Desert to Gaza, and then to Jerusalem, by way of 
Hebron. Fancy me travelling on the back of a camel 



Chap. II. 



THE NILE-OASIS. 



45 



seven or eight hours a clay for from five to six weeks, 
and then travelling on horseback through Palestine and 
Southern Syria. That I have not already been thrown 
is a marvel, seeing that among other audacious feats I 
went from the Nile to Abyclos on a donkey, with a 
cloth for a saddle, and two pieces of rope for stirrups, 
and in this wretched plight had to ride for between 
eight and nine hours. 

£ To give you any, even the faintest idea of what I 
have seen in this wonderful country is impossible. No 
art of writing can depict it. If I were to say that the 
temple of Karnak at Thebes can even now be ascer- 
tained to have measured a mile and a half in circum- 
ference, I should probably only tell you what you have 
read in books, but I should despair if I were obliged to 
describe what I felt when I was in the midst of it, and 
contemplated it as a living whole, while every part 
was covered with sculptures of exquisite finish, except 
where the hieroglyphics crowded on each other so 
thickly that it would require many volumes to copy 
them. There stood their literature, in the midst of the 
most magnificent temple ever raised by the genius of 
man. I went twice to see it by moonlight, when the 
vast masses of light and shade rendered it absolutely 
appalling. 

' But I fear to write like a guide-book, and had 
rather abstain from details till we meet. One effect, 
however, I must tell you which my journey has pro- 
duced upon me. Perhaps you may remember how 
much I always preferred form to colour ; but now, 
owing; to the magnificent effect of this, the driest at- 



46 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt I. 



mosphere in the world, I am getting to like colour 
more than form. The endless variety of hues is extra- 
ordinary. Owing to the transparency of the air, ob- 
jects are seen, as nearly as I can judge, more than 
twice the distance they can be seen in England under 
the most favourable circumstances. Until my eye be- 
came habituated to this, I often overfatigued myself 
by believing that I could reach a certain point in a 
certain time. The result is a wealth and exuberance 
of colour which is hardly to be credited, and which I 
doubt if any painter would dare to represent. 

6 From Jerusalem I propose going to Jericho, the 
Dead Sea, and the Jordan ; thence to the Sea of Galilee ; 
and from thence to Damascus and Baalbec ; afterwards 
to Constantinople, passing through Beyrout and Smyrna. 
What think you of this ? If you were here, and felt 
as I do what it is to have the brain every day over- 
excited, and be constantly drunk with pleasure, you 
would easily understand how impossible much letter- 
writing becomes, and how impatient one grows in try- 
ing to fix on paper thoughts that burn. But, as you 
know of old, if my friends were to measure my friend- 
ship by the length and frequency of my letters, they 
would do me great injustice.' 

The force of these final remarks of Mr. Buckle's will 
be readily understood, and make it unnecessary for me 
to say anything in excuse of what may appear the 
meagreness of his letters from Egypt. 



47 



CHAPTEE III. 

AT THE CAPITAL OF ABABY. 

Some six weeks after our first meeting at Syene, and on 
the morrow after finding ourselves, with a consider- 
able sensation of strangeness, back amid the civilisation 
of the Arabian Capital, I called, according to promise, 
on Mr. Buckle, still living in his boat at Boulak, which 
he preferred to an hotel at Cairo. I found him in the 
midst of a litter of the Egyptian antiquities of which 
he had made rather a large collection, and which he 
was occupied in packing. I cared, however, little for 
his idols, except as expressions of ideas ; and, with Mr. 
Buckle, repugnance to the ignorant, superstitious, and 
fanatical form in which the professors of a religion 
might express themselves, seemed to deprive of all in- 
terest any discussion of the ideas struggling for utter- 
ance in idol, and in myth. But very much opposed to 
his way of thinking, as he must now have found mine 
to be, Mr. Buckle again Kindly urged me to join him 
on his further journey ; for, as I had told him in reply 
to his enquiry at Asouan, my friends of the Nile-voyage 
had to proceed now to England. Mr. Buckle had re- 
solved on the long route to Palestine by Sinai, and if 
possible Petra ; and he spoke enthusiastically of the 
historical interest of the Desert-life. But the Hon. F. 



48 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



T (now Lord A -) had asked me to join him 

in starting direct from Alexandria, for Syria and Greece ; 
I was myself chiefly inclined to settle in Cairo, at least 
till Easter ; and the thought of six weeks in the deserts 
of Sinai and Idumasa was the reverse of attractive. 

Delightful such a journey might, in some respects, 
be ; but not likely, as it seemed, in any important 
degree, to serve my special objects. I soon learned 
more justly to appreciate the historical interest of the 
Arabian Deserts ; but, in answer to Mr. Buckle's en- 
thusiasm on the subject, I fear that I replied in some 
such terms as these. There are, in these Deserts, no 
great monuments, and their chief traditions belong to 
the beginnings, certainly of a remarkable, but certainly 
also, not miraculously peculiar people. And in compa- 
rison with the great Aryan Eaces, the Hindoos and 
Greeks particularly, one can hardly have any special 
sympathy with the Semitic Israelites. For the litera- 
ture which has, at its base, the classic traditions of the 
Troad, probably exercises more real influence on the 
great mass of educated Europeans than that in which 
the barbaric legends of Sinai are enshrined. And still 
more certainly may we affirm that that highest pro- 
duct of Aryan genius — the Plays of Shakespeare — 
would be acknowledged, were the truth confessed, to 
be, save for those of the most limited reading, much 
more really part of the true European Bible than that 
highest product of Semitic genius — the Scriptures of 
the Jews. Hesitating thus, and for the other reasons 
alluded-to, to spend six weeks in what I feared would 
be, to me, in every sense, a Desert-journey, it was in 



Chap. III. AT THE CAPITAL OF ARABY. 



40 



the end agreed that I should let Mr. Buckle know 
definitively the next day whether I would accept his 
kind proposal or not. In the meantime, he asked me 
to stay to lunch, and go witli him thereafter to call 
on the Eev. Mr. Lieder and inspect his Egyptian col- 
lection. 1 

So again our conversation turned on Idols, and 
Mr. Buckle pointed- out, with enthusiasm, the artistic 
beauty of this and the other of his curiosities. For he 
admired the art of Osirianism, though he dismissed its 
faith as superstition, and was hence, perhaps, more 
anxious to preserve its Idols than to understand its 
Gods. But I had little interest in Mr. Buckle's disqui- 
sitions on the artistic qualities of the mere outward 
form of this and the other God. As I looked at 
them, the questions that thronged on me were rather 
as to the meaning and origin of Idols ; the races that 
have been distinguished respectively by the creation 
and destruction of them ; and the causes of this differ- 
ence. 

For are not Idols simply a language ; and is not ido- 
latry but worship that has attached itself to what was 
originally uttered but as the sign of a thought ? Here, 
at the Capital of Araby, is it not obvious to remark that 
the Semitic Jews and Arabs are especially to be distin- 
guished from the Aryan Peoples, by the lack among 
the former, the luxury among the latter, of poetic 
myths and religious symbols ; and hence by the preva- 
lence among the latter, of idolatry, and by the passion, 

1 1 chanced to be present at the dispersion of this collection a year or 
two ago at an auction in the City. 

E 



50 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



among the former, of iconoclasm? But if the chief 
result of my Egyptian studies were confirmed, and if 
Christianism were truly to be regarded as but a moral 
transformation of the old Osirian mythology of a God- 
man coming on earth for the good of mankind, being 
put to death by the Evil One, and rising again to life 
to become the Judge of the Dead in the Future State ; 
— were Christianism truly thus to be regarded ; then, 
do not the simple, unmythologic, and hence unidola- 
trous religions of the Semites — Judaism and Islamism 
— take quite a new aspect ? And Christian though I 
have been born and bred, am I not, by these conclu- 
sions with respect to Christianism, driven to justify the 
long, fierce, and persistent Semitic protest against the 
mythologic and idolatrous creeds of the Aryans ; and 
not only the protest of the Jewish prophets against 
the mythic creeds of ISTaturianism, but the protest also, 
from the time of the Crusades down to this day, the 
protest of every true Muslim against the similarly 
mythic creed of Christianism ? But if so, will not the 
history of Europe, the history of Western Civilisation 
generally — which, on such a large view of Modern 
History as we have learned, on the plain of the 
Pyramids, to take, is seen to have resulted from 
the interaction, moral, intellectual, and social, of those 
two great races of Aryans and Semites — will not 
the history of Western Civilisation have thus to be 
re-written ? 

Parting from Mr. Buckle, after our visit to Mr. 
Lieder, and with such questions occupying me, my 
half-resolution to settle for some time in Cairo, the 



Chap. III. AT THE CAPITAL OF ARABY. 



51 



Capital, not of Egypt only, but of Araby, 1 almost con- 
firmed itself into a rejection of his proposal to join him 
in his further journey. There were here also greater 
facilities of access to books than I had expected. The 
women are still Cleopatras. And on emerging from 
the narrow and deeply-shadowed streets, with their 
thronged maze of Eastern life, into the great square, 
or rather, as it then was, park of the Uzbekeeyeh, the 
floods of light, in which one moved and breathed, 
were, to one from the Hyperborean Isle of Mists, alone 
enough to make existence a delight. For one could 
thus realise something of that divine life of the Erech- 
theidai, of the light-atmosphere of which the Euri- 
pidean chorus sings. 2 

But, pursuing these thoughts, I was led to a fur- 
ther question which finally decided me on accepting 
Mr. Buckle's proposal. For, though the Semitic pro- 
test against Idols dates only, in any large and impor- 
tant sense, from the Sixth Century B.C., and is then 
found to be but one, though the chief manifestation, 

1 Compare Lane, Modern Egyptians, pp. 25 and 20. 1 In every point 
of view, Masr (or Cairo) must be regarded as the first Arab city of our 
age; .... the fame of the professors of this city still remains un- 
rivalled; and its great mosque, the Azhar, continues to attract innu- 
merable students from every part of the Muslim world.' ' Araby/ as 
distinguished from i Arabia/ I would use to denote that vast stretch of 
Arabic-speaking populations extending from the Atlantic shores of 
North Africa to the Nile, and thence, through Arabia, Syria, and 
Mesopotamia, to Persia. 

2 'Epf^0£lOai TO TTCtXaiOV o\j3ioi, 

Kai Qewv 7raT5eg fxaicdpwv, 
'ispdg XM>png ciTropOljTOV, 

T' dTTOtytpfiofiEVOl 

KXtivordrav cocpiav, 
Aiei Sid Xafjnrpo-drov 

Ba'ivovTeg dfipug aiOepog. — Medea, 824-30. 
E 2 



52 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



of a general monotheistic Revolution, and though this 
protest, therefore, must be qualified as Neo-Semitic, 
rather than as Semitic ; yet if we compare, during 
these past two milleniums and a half of Modern His- 
tory in the larger conception of it, the contributions of 
the Semites with those of the Aryans to civilisation ; 
that Protest by which the Semites have, in this age, 
been distinguished, would appear to have arisen from 
a real and profound difference in the character, and 
hence function, of those two races of Semites and 
Aryans. The Aryan peoples alone have been the 
creators of Art, of Science, and of Law, in, at least, 
all their higher developments. But the Eeligions of 
that Modern Western Civilisation which has been the 
most advanced and progressive of all — Judaism, Chris- 
tianism, and Islamism — we owe, the first and third, en- 
tirely, and the second chiefly, to the Semites. Whence, 
then, came this characteristic intellectual creation, on the 
one hand, and religious creation, on the other, and how 
is either, and especially the latter, to be accounted for, 
unless Moral Forces are efficacious as historical causes ? 
But by such views and questions my general and ab- 
stract was converted into a special and concrete oppo- 
sition to that main theory of Mr. Buckle's which denies 
the efficacy of Moral Forces as historical causes, and 
hence eliminates them from historical method. Besides, 
he thus appeared to me as but a one-sided, though very 
able and logical, representative of Materialism. This 
Method and Philosophy, however, I had long desired 
more thoroughly to understand, in order to assimilate 
all the truth in it, and so work-out that more complete 



Chap. III. AT THE CAPITAL OF ARABY. 



53 



theory of Causation which I had already long seen 
to be the necessary preliminary of, and probably also 
the most direct road to, the discovery of that Law of 
History which would be the basis, or rather intellectual 
side, of the New Ideal. And thus, whether a journey 
through the Arabian Deserts were found in itself to 
have any results or not, such a journey occupied in 
discussing with Mr. Buckle those subjects on which we 
were so distinctly opposed, could hardly, it seemed to 
me, but have some results, and such, I hoped, as would 
be as agreeable to him as to myself. For there was no 
finer trait, perhaps, in Mr. Buckle's character than his 
intellectual ardour and generosity. 

It was then, it must be confessed, rather with a 
view to discussion with Mr. Buckle, than from any 
special interest in the Arabian Deserts, that I, at length, 
resolved to accept his kindly urged proposal that I 
should join him in his further travels, through Sinai and 
Iduma3a, to Palestine. Surprised I certainly afterwards 
was that I could ever have been thus blind to the im- 
mense historic interest of these Deserts. But so it was ; 
and, but for Mr. Buckle, I should probably not have 
undertaken one of the most fruitful journeys of my life. 
Having, however, come to a resolution, I again lunched 
with Mr. Buckle as agreed, and afterwards accompanied 
him to the Consulate to settle and sign the contract 
with our Dragoman. The day after, I set off to Alex- 
andria with the purpose of completing certain political 
enquiries, and with the hope of being in time for an 
expedition I had happened to hear was starting to in- 
spect the Suez Canal under the conduct of M. de 



54 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



Lesseps, to whom, when last in Alexandria, I had been 
introduced by our Consul-Greneral. A week thus 
elapsed before I again saw Mr. Buckle, and I have thus 
little comparatively to say of him here. But an in- 
teresting account of several dinner-parties at which 
Mr. Buckle was present in Cairo is given in an Ameri- 
can's 6 Personal Eeminiscences,' which were originally 
published in the ' Atlantic Monthly,' 1 and which, by the 
courtesy of the proprietors of that periodical, I have 
been permitted to reprint in the Appendix. 

Meeting Mr. Buckle, as I went to call on him, on 
my return from Alexandria, and walking arm-in-arm 
on the oft-trodden road between Boulak and Cairo, I 
found that, if he interested himself comparatively but 
little in the ancient hieroglyphics of Egypt, still less 
did he care for its modern Suez canals. He acknow- 
ledged the important political bearings of the scheme ; 
but it was to him merely one of the proximate causes 
of the politician ; and he, as a philosopher, desired to 
concern himself only with ultimate causes, such as 
economical and educational statistics, and manners and 
customs. Had he been able to write on Egypt, his 
work would have been, he said, a contribution to Poli- 
tical Economy. 

There are times, however, I replied, when, as it 
appears to me, ultimate and proximate causes coa- 
lesce, and when the action of neither can be properly 
understood and predicted without knowledge and 
understanding of the other. Such a time, I think, is 
the present ; and it is in this coming to the surface, as 

1 April, 1863. 



Chap. III. 



AT THE CAPITAL OF ARAB Y. 



55 



it were, of ultimate causes, that the revolutionary cha- 
racter of our present historical period essentially consists. 
Economical and educational statistics, and manners and 
customs seem, therefore, to me to be of consequence 
only as they enable one to understand the conditions of 
the action of what the true ultimate causes of change 
in our present period are — those Intellectual Forces 
which are leading to the utter destruction of theological 
Creeds generally, and especially of that of Christianity ; 
and, no less, as I think, those Moral Forces which are 
aspiring to a reconstruction of the Ideal. Ignorant 
of, or incapable of appreciating these profounder causes 
of change, a politician of these days is in the position 
of those first inwanderers into the Nile-valley, who 
were ignorant of, and unprepared for, the vast, but 
perfectly regular revolution of its annual flooding ; and, 
like them, these politicians will scarce save themselves 
from being utterly swept-away by those greater Forces 
which, in their contemptible arrogance, they have 
rather ignored, than been ignorant of. The more I 
study the Eastern Question, especially, the more I 
become convinced that whoever would contribute, as a 
statesman, to its solution, must profoundly study the 
moral and religious condition and tendencies of the 
Eastern and Western peoples. This will, I think, be 
found to reduce itself to the study of the condition and 
tendencies of Semitic Faith and Aryan Thought. And 
it is because of their being the grooves and channels of 
the greater Intellectual and Moral Forces of the time, 
or the tools and instruments of men in whom these 
Forces are, or will become incarnate, that such schemes 



56 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet I. 



as that of the Suez Canal, and the intrigues connected 
with it, appear to me to have an interest for the 
philosopher as well as for the politician. But we were 
now amid the throngs of Cairo, and having different 
engagements, we soon after parted. 

Next day, the 2Sth of February, was the Eve of 
Eamaclan, — Leylet-er-Boo-yeh, or ' the Night of the 
Observation ' [of the New Moon] — and I was glad to 
have an opportunity of witnessing, at the Capital of 
Araby, the commencement of this great religious ob- 
servance of the chief of the Neo-Semitic peoples. In 
the forenoon, the streets were filled with processions of 
Sheykhs of Trades, &c. After lunch, I had the good 
fortune to meet in the vast crowd an EfFendi, a friend 
of mine, and his hareem, and so rode up with them to 
the citadel. As the procession had not yet arrived, I 
went into Mohammed Alee's great mosque of Oriental 
alabaster with Kadejeh, Zenobie, and Leila, and an 
English woman, a friend of theirs, who, after a romantic 
courtship, had been, at length, carrie.cl-off by a Turkish 
naval officer. But soon the boom of guns, and the 
clattering of cavalry announce the arrival of the high 
official personages. And the black-eyed houris, to 
whom I had been making my little Arabic go as far 
as possible, rush laughing out of the mosque, as quick 
as their trousered limbs and slippered feet, unused to 
walking, let them. And then we heard the Fast 
proclaimed — 

Ya uiiimata kheyri-l-anain ! Syarn ! Syam ! 
0 Followers of the Best of the Creation ! Fasting ! Fasting ! 

Having seen my fair friends into their carriage, I 



Chap. III. AT THE CAPITAL OF ARAJBY. 



57 



returned alone with many thoughts. For with all 
respect to Mr. Buckle, one cannot but think it a shal- 
low philosophy that sees in such things but ignorant 
and fanatical superstition. And narrow also is the 
sympathy that understands such things only in the 
professors of one's own religion ; making no due allow- 
ance for the universal tendency of outward observance 
to take the place of inward purification ; and for the 
tendency, not confined to Islamism, to pay more regard 
to the letter than to the spirit of a great Prophet's 
teachings. 1 But the philosophy of the imposition of 
such observances is also worth considering. That 
passion for self-sacrifice, which so wonderfully co-exists 
with the self-seeking of our nature, is thus gratified ; 
and a very powerful bond of union is also thus con- 
stituted between 'believers,' as distinguished from 
'infidels.' This leads us back, however, again to the 
consideration of the respective contributions to Human 
Progress of those two creeds of Christianism and Islam- 
ism, of which the professors have, for 1,200 years, 
warred against each other as ' infidels,' and arrogated, 
each party exclusively to their own side, the title of 
' true believers.' And what a task it were, and what 
great qualities of varied sympathetic insight it would 

1 ' Persons who are sick and on a journey, and soldiers in time of war, 
are not obliged to observe this Fast during Ramadan, but .... 
should fast an equal number of days at a future time. Fasting is also 
to be dispensed with in the case of a nurse and a pregnant woman. The 
Prophet even disapproved of any one keeping the fast if not perfectly 
able ; and desired no man to fast so much as to injure his health, ov dis- 
qualify himself for necessary labour. But the modern Muslims seem to 
regard the Fast of Ramadan a3 of more importance than any other 
religious act, for many of them keep this Fast who neglect their daily 
prayers.' — Lane, Modem Egyptians, p. 91. 



58 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



require, truly to set-forth, — without partiality, and still 
more, without that cold and unimaginative dispassion- 
ateness which makes realising insight impossible, — 
truly to set-forth the mutual relation and respective 
action of Aryans and Semites in the development of 
Western Civilisation ! 

On the evening of our last day in Cairo I gave a 
return-dinner to my friend the Effendi ; and then, 

with him, Lord L , and Sir C M , sallied 

forth into the streets. The sun had set ; the lamps 
within and without the domes and minarets were 
lighted ; and the exhausted Muslims, refreshed with a 
slight repast, are out in throngs, going to, or returning 
from, the mosques or the houses of friends ; or they 
are sitting in rows before the coffee-shops, smoking the 
dignified tchibouque, and listening to the story of the 
adventures of Antar, or some other Arabian nights' 
entertainment ; or again, they are crowding the dra- 
matic and lyric booths in the Uzbekeeyeh, where the 
performances are more expressive than delicate. A 
sort of Punch-ancl-Jucly-show, — as at a fair to which 
we had gone in Upper Egypt, — seemed to be the most 
popular entertainment. And here also, as there, I was 
exceedingly struck with the behaviour of the audience. 
There, as here, the scenes were of the most frankly 
gross character. And yet I hardly observed one mean- 
ing look pass between any man and woman present. 
One was thus led to question whether the effect of 
such performances, utterly gross as they were, was not 
less immoral than that of many a French play. Yet 
how different the states of Civilisation, and of mental 



Chap. III. AT THE CAPITAL OF ARAB Y. 



and moral development that might be typified respec- 
tively by the Arabic 6 Punch-and- Judy ' and the 6 Grande 
Duchesse ' played by Madame Schneider. In one, the 
frankest representation of scenes and acts is required 
which, in the other, amuse only when hinted-at in 
gesture, inuendo, and double-entendre. 

And yet, was this grossness to be considered as the 
characteristic of a certain stage of Civilisation, and not 
rather of the Semitic race generally ? Are not the 
commonest Hindoos far more scrupulously decent with 
their loin-cloth than Arabs of the same class with their 
shirt? Would women of the better classes of any 
Aryan race listen, in whatever privacy, to stories, and 
witness exhibitions of such utterly gross indecency as 
Arab ladies take pleasure in ? 1 And is there to be 
found, in any Aryan literature of a high and religious 
character, passages so simply beastly as we come upon 
in Ezekiel, for instance, or Isaiah ? But does not this 
suggest further reflection on the wonderful capacity of 
belief, and power of custom, illustrated in such passages 
being esteemed by cultivated men of Aryan race ' Holy 
Writ,' and, as such, read out aloud before the ladies 
and women-servants of a household ? Does not this 
Semitic grossness also negative the theory, by some 
maintained, of the Semites having been the moral, be- 
cause relatively the non-intellectual and unscientific, 
element in the development of European Civilisation ? 
For is not a certain breadth of intellectual develop- 
ment, or at least aptitude, necessary for moral refine- 
ment ? 

1 Compare Lane, Modern Egyptians, p. 477. 



» 



60 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Past I. 



Suddenly, however, one's reflections are disturbed 
by a rout of Christian revellers with grotesque masks 
on their faces, and flaming torches in their hands, 
rushing madly through the enraged Muslims. And, 
getting out of the star-beheld tumult, one went home- 
ward with a renewed feeling of the complexity of Life, 
and the wonclrousness of Existence. For how humor- 
ously are those grave and sacred feelings — which if one 
denies, or has no sympathetic insight into, one can 
understand but the poorest half of the Forces that 
built these magnificent Mosques and Tombs, and made 
this Fast, and like self-mortifications, customs — how 
humorously are they travestied and mocked by such 
scenes as one may witness at Cairo in Eamadan ! 

But farewell now to all those throngs of life, all 
those amusements, all those delights of a great city 
which St. Jerome confesses himself 1 to have been tor- 
mented by the recollection of, in his desert hermitage. 
On the morrow (Monday, the 3rd March), of those 
night-scenes at Cairo of which I have just given a 
glimpse, I left for Suez, with the long and not inad- 
venturous Desert-journey before us, by Sinai, the Gulf 
of Akaba, and Petra, to Jerusalem. In the prospect of 
it, two or three clays before, when inspecting our tents 
in the Uzbekeeyeh, Mr. Buckle, pulling the ear of one 
of the boys who accompanied him, had naturally ex- 
claimed, ' It is really quite exciting ! ' But I left Cairo, 
as it chanced, alone. For the train started at half-past 
seven o'clock in the morning, and Mr. Buckle, having 
to come all the way from Boulak, was late. 

J See Epist. xxii. ; Ad Eustoch (7), pp. 92 ; 93. 



a 



Chap. HI. AT THE CAPITAL OF ABABY. 



61 



Next clay, however, he arrived at Suez. In the after- 
noon, we strolled together on the sands at the head of 
the famous Gulf, in full flow of talk as usual, and greatly 
enjoying the mixture of sea- and desert-air, which would, 
indeed, have been altogether delightful, had not the at- 
mosphere also contained camels denied their burial-rites. 
The topics of our conversation I find thus noted in my 
Diary — 8 The Women of Egypt — Individuals and Eaces 
— the Falsity of the Syllogism, and of Special Sciences.' 
But in the evening, under the stars, on the flat roof of 
one of the best caravanserais in the East, our talk, sug- 
gested by something I said of Eenan's 4 Etudes d'His- 
toire religieuse,' one of the books I had with me, was of 
higher matters than in the afternoon on the sands. 
And after a time I burst-out with what the meditations 
of my solitary day here had borne-in on me of the 
profound truth of that universal answer of the Apostles 
to those who asked, tl /xe Sec iroieiv iva cfoOcj ; What 
must I do to be saved ? n'urTevo-ov \ Believe ! Yes ! 
It was as if they had said, 'Do? Do nothing ! Believe 
only, and deeds will come ! ' For without faith, with- 
out subjection to an Idea, works are dead. New birth, 
new life, new works are the expression of, and possible 
only through, some new Idea. And this chiefly has 
characterised all heroes — their having, and having faith 
in the regenerating power of Ideas. So especially 
Siddhartha the Bouddha, Jesus the Christ, and Mo- 
hammed the Prophet of God ; and so also the apostles 
of the great Faiths of which they were the founders. 
Mr. Buckle, however, did not make much response 
to this, and soon after bidding me 8 Good-night,' left 



62 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part I. 



me to pursue these thoughts by myself amid the starry 
solitude. 

Consider, then, what Moral Forces are, and how 
great that historical importance of them is which Mr. 
Buckle denied. Moral Forces are Wants of Oneness, 
Wants of the Ideal, or, more concretely to define 
them, the passions of love and hate which at once 
create, and are stimulated by, Beliefs. This is that 
element which causes those sudden revolutionary out- 
bursts which give to historical phenomena that appear- 
ance of arbitrariness on which annalists and litterateurs 
who, so far rightly, acknowledge the importance of 
Moral Forces, found their denial of the possibility of a 
science of them, and hence of a Science of History. 
But is it impossible that a large sympathy with human 
nature, and an accumulated knowledge of historical 
facts should ever enable us to gauge, in some approxi- 
mate degree, at least, the force, and in some approxi- 
mate degree, at least, predict the manifestation of those 
sublime Wants which make men capable of utter self- 
devotion in order that that which they may believe to 
be of the Devil, — false and unjust, — may be swept 
away, and in order that that which they may believe 
to be of God, — just and true, — may triumph? Can 
any scientific thinker imagine that these passions of 
belief burst-out of themselves, and without such defin- 
able conditions as, for instance, the destruction of old 
Ideals and what History should seem to prove to be 
the necessary consequence of that — the presentation of 
new Ideals ? But if a Force has a definable condition 



Chap. III. AT THE CAPITAL OF ARAB Y. 



63 



of manifestation, then, is not such manifestation pre- 
dictable, and is it not thus at once brought within the 
domain of Science ? These Moral Forces, the capa- 
bility of being touched by Ideas, the capacity of being 
carried away by passions of Belief, are what chiefly 
distinguish human life from brute life, and make Pro- 
gress, as distinguished from mere Change, possible. 
But if so, then, without insight into these Forces as 
elements in the determination of historical phenomena, 
there can be no true understanding of the history of 
Man. And if so, disproof of the objective truth of 
religious dogmas is comparatively a small matter ; still 
more small, ridicule of them ; and what alone it is 
really important to do is, to get some insight into their 
moral origin, and express, in terms accordant with our 
new knowledge, their moral truth. 

It is from the intimate internal point of view, to 
which we are thus led, that our historical conception 
of Christianity, and of the relations of Semites and of 
Aryans is completed and made more true. JSTo doubt, 
when we see Christianism to be, in its external form, but 
a new Osirianism, we must justify the opposition both 
of Judaism and Islamism to its mythologic superstition 
and idolatrous worship ; and hence, considerably modify 
the views usually entertained of the relations of Semites 
and Aryans in the development of European Civilisa- 
tion. But when we consider the myths and doctrines 
of Christianism from the internal point of view of the 
Moral Wants creative of, and satisfied by them ; we 
must acknowledge that, notwithstanding the fictitious- 



64 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt I. 



ness of its Osiriaxi mythology, and the many pernicious 
social consequences that follow from its intellectual 
falsehood ; it was certainly well for the future of 
Human Development that the unmythologic, and un- 
idolatrous, and hence, intellectually less false Creed of 
Mohammed did not, as it should seem so nearly to have 
done, at the seven-days battle of Tours (a.d. 735) im- 
pose itself on Europe. 

And yet, as I further reflected, is the Creed of Mo- 
hammed, indeed — -though, from its unmythologic and 
unidolatrous character, apparently — really less false 
than that of Christ ? Are not both Islamism and 
Christianism intellectually, but specially absolute forms 
of the Spiritist Philosophy, or theory of Causation? 
And notwithstanding its mythology, is not Christianism, 
if we consider it, not only not less, but more intellec- 
tually true, or less opposed, at all events, to intellectual 
truth, as well as also more rich in moral truth, than 
either of those Creeds from which it has met with so 
persistent an opposition ? For has it not shown itself, 
in fact, less opposed to the development of scientific 
Thought than either Judaism or Islamism ? To what 
can this be due but just to that Aryan influence which, 
in the doctrine of the Trinity, made of that absolute con- 
ception of the Oneness of the Godhead, characteristic of 
both the great Keo-Semitic Creeds, a relative conception 
of Oneness, and a conception, therefore, less opposed 
to the conceptions of Science? And hence, though, 
in its negative action, the. Neo-Semitic protest against 
the Aryan pantheon of Gods, and Trinity of the God- 
head, has undoubtedly contributed to the development 



CnAP. III. AT THE CAPITAL OF ARABY. Go 

of true Thought ; yet, as, in its affirmative action, that 
protest maintained such an absolute conception of the 
Godhead as has shown itself, if opposed to the creation 
of Mythology, equally opposed to the creation of Sci- 
ence ; it may be doubted whether true Thought, and 
hence the realisation of the Ideal of Civilisation, has 
not been, on the whole, as much retarded as advanced 
by the historical action of the Semites. 

Many other thoughts suggested themselves as co- 
rollaries of these. But one only need here be noted. 
If Moral Forces are to be thus regarded, and if Ideas 
are thus what is essential in human life, Immortality is 
the deathlessness of what is truly one's soul, the Ideas 
one has expressed — and men are divisible into Mortals 
and Immortals. Only, however, out of suffering comes, 
in general, that Idea which is the hero's triumph and 
immortality. And hence we may perhaps be led to 
the true solution of that moral problem which pressed 
on, but was never articulately solved by, the Jews — 
the suffering of the 6 Good Man.' 

At length I descended the little trap-door that led 
from the broad flat roof, and the doming stars, and got 
to my star-outshuttiug room, and bed. And I slept 
without any such disturbance as the previous night. 
Then the excitement of thought had not been calmed 
even in sleep. For this excitement it was, I suppose, 
that caused one of those wonderfully vivid dreams which 
arouse the whole body even as in the waking state to 
action, of which unmistakeable traces are left — dreams, 
the appearances seen in which were — before their sub- 
jective causes were known as we now know them — 

F 



GO 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet L 



believed to be objective realities, and named — ' Spirits/ 
As garments for the Gods, whose external origin, at 
least, is to be found in these mere dream-appearances 
— £ Spirits ' — -how endless the webs of mythic dream 
that have, in the waking state, been woven ! And 
prodigious has been the effect, yet, for evil as well as 
good, of that JSTeo-Semitic protest against the Gods in 
the name of God, which, first, Mr. Buckle's idols, and 
then, all the associations of the Capital of Araby had 
so especially led me to consider. 



> 



PAET II. 
SINAI. 



(39 



CHAPTEE I. 

THE WELLS OF MOSES. 

No passage being practicable for us through the midst 
of the Sea, either in consequence of a 4 strong east,' or 
of a 6 strong south wind,' 1 or otherwise, — though when 
such wonders naturally occur, it is with absolute in- 
difference to the quality of the persons who may be 
benefited by them,— Mr. Buckle and I took a boat, 
and so getting across to the wilderness of 6 Shur,' 2 or 
'Etham,' 3 found dromedaries waiting for us 'on the 
edge ' of it, to carry us to the Wells of Moses and our 
first encampment in the Desert. This, however, was 
the first and last time Mr. Buckle mounted his drome- 
dary. For he had already had sufficient experience of 
dromedary-riding at Cairo, 4 to decide on taking the pre- 
caution to have, besides his dromedary, a good Cairene 
donkey for his Desert-journey. And this day's further 
experience, in the short ride from the beach to our en- 
campment at the Wells, gave that dromedary a complete 
holiday for all the weeks of our journey that Mr. Buckle 
had engaged him for. For the stiffness of Mr. Buckle's 

1 In the Hebrew, the blast of Yahvelrs nostrils is said to have been 
from the east; in the Greek of the Septuagint, from the south. 

2 Exodus xv. 22. 

3 Numbers xxx. 8. 

4 See Personal Reminiscences of H. T. Buckle — Atlantic Monthly, 
April, 18G3, p. 497 ; or below, Appendix B. 



70 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IL 



limbs was most remarkable in a man only in his forty- 
first year, though he would easily have passed for 
three-score. Indeed, among the pilgrims of this year 
he usually went, I believe, by the name of 6 Old 
Buckle,' though in reality very much younger than 
many of them. 1 And dromedary-riding — of which the 
Arab ideal is fifty (?) miles an hour, and so smoothly 
that the rider can hold a full cup of coffee in his hand 
unspilt, — dromedary-riding, if there is not some little 
spring in one, is not fatiguing only, but excruciating ; 
otherwise, it is less tiring than horseback. 

So little spring, however, physical spring, was 
there in Mr. Buckle, that even his donkey he could 
not mount without assistance ; — one man helping 
him up, another, on the other side, keeping the 
saddle straight, and one holding the animal in case 
of fright. This was the first donkey, I suppose, that 
ever traversed the Desert, for there had to be pro- 
vided for him a special camel to carry the water he 
needed. He was in general a most philosophically dis- 
posed animal ; but a certain humorous incident led to 
my naming him 6 Lucius,' after the hero of the 6 golden ' 
tale of Apuleius. And though his hatred of the camel 
Mr. Buckle could never find words to express — Miss 
Martineau considered that their general expression of 
spiteful discontent would make them figure well in hell, 
as, to use that lady's own emphatic language, 6 damned 
creatures,' — yet for 6 Lucius ' Mr. Buckle conceived 
a great affection. Indeed the asses of Egypt are so 
superior to all other donkeys that they cannot justly be 

1 Reminiscences — Athenceum, 27th July, 1873, p. 115. 



Chap. I. THE WELLS OF MOSES. 71 

called by the name of 4 ass.' And it was by the more 
endearing name of £ moke ' that they were celebrated 
in an Epinikean ode by a Pindar of my acquaintance. 

Mr. Buckle's Arabian costume was an old black 
dress-coat which, he himself said, his valet would not 
have worn, a double-breasted cloth waistcoat, and 
winter trousers, all over thick flannel under-garments. 
A wide-awake, with an ample puggery, crowned his 
spare stooping figure, covered his bald head, and 
shaded his unshaven face. And he further endeavoured 
to protect himself from the sun by a constant white 
umbrella, and an occasional black bunions. 4 1 was 
much amused,' says Mr. Longmore, 6 with his costume. 
He still wore the old swallow-tailed black coat I had 
seen him with previously ; but instead of the decorous 
white shirt which had always previously formed part of 
this dress, he now wore a flannel shirt of Eob Eoy 
tartan, that is, black and red check. This garment he 
seemed very proud of, and told us it was one of a 
parcel he had ordered out from England, flannel shirts 
having been recommended to him as the only con- 
venient wear in the Desert. His measure had not 
been very accurately given, and the long gaudy 
sleeves of the shirt protruded ever so far over his 
wrists, and beyond those of his clerical-looking coat.' 1 
I hinted once or twice that all this was rather warm 
under the circumstances. But he replied that, though 
the common sort of Arabs certainly wore nothing 
whatever but a short shirt, yet the great chiefs had 
several robes- — which was true, only they were of 

1 Reminiscences — Athencsum, 27th February, 1873, p. 115. 



72 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



light silk, and flowing round the person. Of course, a 
light flannel shirt to prevent chills is a necessary, or at 
least a desirable, precaution. But it is to be regretted 
that Mr. Buckle would never make any change in 
the above attire, as it induced the most excessive 
perspiration, and by thus weakening him prepared 
the end. 

And most remarkable appeared to me the irony of 
it all. For no man spoke more than Mr. Buckle of the 
e Laws of Health ; ' believed himself to have so due a 
regard for them ; or made more of the morality of the 
observance of these laws. And yet all his health- 
knowledge, and his health-morality was overborne by 
some wonderful whim for effecting an inappreciable 
saving either of trouble or of expense ; or for wearing 
out old clothes himself; or for showing superiority to 
fashion ; or for wearing the same English garments in 
all climates, as if their thickness were an equal protec- 
tion from heat as from cold ; or whim for all these 
futilities together, and for I know not what besides. 
But, 0 most sensible "reader, plume not yourself on the 
impossibility of your so acting. For I question if most 
of us do not often sin in an essentially similar manner 
— permitting the dictates of what, in judging another, 
we should declare the plainest common-sense, to be 
overborne by some inconceivable fancy. And the pro- 
bability also is that this fancy will, as in Mr. Buckle's 
unfortunate case, have a singularly ironic relation to our 
knowledge of facts, or our ideal of conduct. 

On arriving at the Wells of Moses, we found 
another party encamped near us. It was that of the Kev. 



Chap. I. 



THE WELLS OF MOSES, 



7:} 



T. St. John Tyrwhitt, on their way back from Sinai. 
On returning from paying them a visit, Mr. Buckle 
gave me the not altogether gratifying intelligence that 
two of the party had forestalled me in the adventure 
I had hoped myself to achieve, that, namely, of being 
the first to stand on the head of the 6 Mother of 
Fennel/ Urn Shaumer, the highest mountain of the 
peninsula. And as to the impression made by himself 
on the party he visited, the Eev. Mr. Tyrwhitt thus 
writes : 4 We here met for the first and last time with 
Buckle, the historian of Civilisation. Nothing could 
have been more delightful than his conversation for 
the half hour I passed in his company, and he was full 
of life and energy of mind. But his whole frame 
seemed slight and worn to a degree, and I thought he 
was taking mistaken precautions against heat which 
would try his strength severely.' 1 

This little oasis of Aynn Musa, they say, one may 
fairly connect with the song of £ Moses and the children 
of Israel, unto the Lord.' But neither of this bar- 
baric ode ; nor of the wondrous passage of the Israelites 
upon dry ground in the midst of the sea, of which 6 the 
waters were a wall unto them on their right hand and 
on their left;' nor of 'the honour which the Lokd,' 
having hardened the hearts of the Egyptians, got him- 
self 4 upon Pharaoh and upon all his host, upon his 
chariots, and upon his horsemen,' was our conversa- 
tion that night, as we strolled arm-in-arm on the desert, 
under the stars. For it is so difficult to persuade oneself 
that the fervour professed about Jewish legends is, in 

1 Vacation Tourists, vol. i. } p. 356. 



.74 



RIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



these days, thoroughly genuine ; to persuade oneself 
■that, except in quite exceptional cases, educated persons 
do, as they would have it appear, really believe the 
Jewish traditions in the mythic forms in which they 
have come down to us, and really sympathise with the 
ferocious spirit of many, at least, of these traditions ; 
so difficult is it to persuade oneself of all this, that, 
interesting as, to the historical student, all legendary 
lore must be, the indignant disgust, justly excited by 
petty subtleties, and contemptible wrigglings, in order 
that one may be able to say that one believes, or sym- 
pathises with what, in point of fact, one does not 
believe, or sympathise with, is apt to attach itself to 
those Jewish legends themselves which are, at present, 
so commonly the subjects of these sham-beliefs and 
.sham -sympathies. Neither, therefore, of the Israelites, 
nor of their God, Yahveh, was our talk. And the text 
that suggested the principal theme of our conversation 
at these Wells came, not from the Books of Moses, but 
from what I have already ventured to call much more 
really part of the true Bible of educated Europeans, 
the Plays of Shakespeare. 

Suddenly stopping as he walked, leaning on my 
arm, looking up at the bright stars, Mr. Buckle repeated 
that sublime passage in the c Merchant of Venice ' — 

Look how the floor of Heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ! 
There's not the smallest orb that thou behold'st 
But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims ; 
Such harmony is in immortal souls ! 
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it. 



Chap. I. THE WELLS OF MOSES, 75 

I replied with favourite lines of my boyhood : — 

At tibi jnventus, at tibi immortalitas ; 

Tibi parta divum est vita. Periment mutuis 

Elementa sese, et interibimt ictibus. 

Tu pemianebis sola semper integra, 

Tli cuncta rerum quassa, cuncta naufraga, 

Jam portu in ipso tuta contemplabere. 1 

And I recalled the famous question which Socrates in 
the £ Gorgias,' 2 quotes from a lost play 3 of Euripides : — 

rig 8' oicei> ei to Z,yv jxsv tort KarOaveli 1 , 
to Ka-Qavtiv of Cyv'y 
Who knows but to live is death, 
And death, to live ? 4 

Mr. Buckle then set forth, in eloquent and glowing 
language, the grounds of his belief in a memoried per- 
sonal Immortality, but not finding that I considered 
his arguments conclusive, he suddenly expressed himself 
unable to discuss the subject, and with an abrupt 
* Good-night,' retired to his tent — leaving me, however, 
not without increased liking for the man who thus 
revealed such depth of feeling in the passionate hope 
of rejoining a beloved and recently lost mother. 

Left alone with the Desert and the starry Heavens, 
Mr. Buckle's argument for a memoried personal Im- 
mortality — 6 It must be a fact, for if it were not true, 
how could we stand up and live ? It must be a fact, 

1 I read these lines lirst in Todd, Student's Guide, p. 273 ; and after- 
wards found them to be a translation from Addison, Cato, act v. sc. 1, 
Works, vol. i. pp. 217-8. 

2 Plato, Opera (Bekker), torn. iii. p. 273. 

3 The Phryxus, according to one Scholiast. 

4 With a finer passage, however, than either of these of mine, Mr. 
Thayer, the American Consul-General at Cairo, replied, quoting from 
Blanco White (Autobiography, vol. iii. p. 48), when Mr. Buckle had 
recited, at a dinner-party there, the above favourite lines of his. See 
below, Appendix B. 



76 



FIX GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III 



for if this forecast of the affections be a delusion, we- 
must believe that the purest and noblest elements of our 
nature conspire to deceive us ' 1 — these arguments of 
Mr. Buckles appeared to me weaker than I had ven- 
tured even to suggest to their author. For the 
assumption on which such arguments are based is that 
of the credibility of the 6 forecasts ' of the affections. 
But how could such an assumption be admitted, save 
we found, as we certainly do not find, that, 4 the fore- 
casts of the affections ' are identical, universal, and 
never self-delusive ? And wonderful it seemed to me 
that any one acquainted with the facts of Existence 
could dare to make so much of himself as to found an 
argument for the truth of a belief on his 6 inability to- 
st and up and live,' were he to find it false. As if such 
inability, however painful to him, could matter to the 
Universe ! Mr. Buckle's 4 argument from the affections,' 
is, in fact, the fundamental argument of all mysticisms ; 
and more particularly of that of Christianity, on the 
assumed truth of which he warned men no longer to 
rest their belief in Immortality. ' It fitted him so well ; 
it was so exactly what he needed ; it must be true, 
or how could he live ? ' was the very argument with 
which Uncle Tom, as he sailed clown the Mississippi, 

1 Miscel. and Posth. Works, vol. i. p. 67. Compare Sir W. Hamilton's 
argument, 'unless our intelligence be declared a lie.' On what he 
characterizes as this 1 tiresome iinal appeal of Sir W. Hamilton's/ Mr. 
J. S. Mill remarks, f It is time to understand once for all what this 
means. Does it mean that if our intelligence cannot conceive one thing 
apart from another, the one thing cannot exist without the other ? If 
yes, what becomes of the Philosophy of the Conditioned ? If no, what 
becomes of the present argument ? ' — Examination of Sir W. Hamilton' & 
Philosophy, p. 299. 



€hip. I. 



THE WELLS OF MOSES. 



77 



convinced himself of the truth of Christianity. And 
precisely, the same as the ignorant negro's was the 
learned philosopher's argument for the ' blessed faith ' 
that was in him. 1 But clearly, if this argument is 
admissible in one case, it is admissible in all. Yet, 
if so admitted, it equally clearly refutes itself. For 
the faiths that found themselves on this argument are 
not only innumerable, but mutually antagonistic. And 
only from the fact that fraternal quarrels are the most 
bitter of all, can we account for Mr. Buckle's not only 
condemning, but contemning those who, starting from 
the same fundamental assumption as his own with 
regard to the credibility of the persuasions of the 
affections, arrived at different conclusions. 

Yet, is there not a curious connection between Mr. 
Buckle's assumption of the credibility of the forecasts of 
the affections, and his fundamental theory of the non- 
effect of Moral Forces in determining the greater 
phenomena of Man's history? For suppose we find 
that Moral Forces are not only, as Mr. Buckle affirmed, 
of as great importance as Intellectual Forces in the 
determination of individual phenomena ; but, as Mr. 

1 The soi-disant ' Country Parson ' does indeed say (Erasers Magazine, 
June, 1859, p. G51) that Uncle Tom's, though 'the same,' was 'a better 
logic than Mr. Buckle's, when the poor negro drew his best evidence of 
the truths of the Christian Faith from his own consciousness.' This, 
however, would appear to be a dictum as ludicrously self-contradictory 
as that of the same ' Country Parson ' when, in reference to Mr. Buckle's 
assertion that ' the doctrine of Immortality was known to the world 
before Christianity was heard of,' he valorously exclaims, ' I deny that ! ' 
and then incontinently proceeds, with a charming simplicity, to affirm, 
that ' Greek and Roman philosophers of the highest class, regarded 
that doctrine as a delusion of the vulgar.' (Ibid. 049.) For a doctrine, 
admittedly questioned before Christianity was heard of, must surely 
have existed ? 



78 



PI I GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



Buckle denied, of as great importance as Intellectual 
Forces in the determination also of historical pheno- 
mena ; and suppose further that we find the historical 
function of Intellect and office of Science to be, to 
give forms in accordance with the reality of things, or 
true forms, to the ideal constructions of the affections , 
or Moral Forces of our nature ; then, evidently, such 
an historical theory will make it impossible for us to 
consider such an argument for Immortality as that 
offered by Mr. Buckle, in any degree satisfactory, or, 
indeed to regard it as otherwise than entirely delusive. 
Had Mr. Buckle, therefore, seen how great is the part 
played by Moral Forces in the determination of his- 
torical phenomena, he could hardly have missed seeing 
also that forecasts of the affections cannot be admitted 
to have any validity till substantiated by the intellect. 
And hence, paradoxical though it may at first sight 
appear, had Mr. Buckle's theory of History been less 
purely materialist, his arguments for Immortality would 
have been less purely mystical. 

But suddenly, as I was reflecting on Mr. Buckle's 
argument for a supernatural Immortality, a view broke 
on me which gave a new and profound interest to the 
record of the Exodus, and Desert-wanderings of the 
Israelites. For in reply to Mr. Buckle's 6 argument 
from the affections,' it was recalled, by the very name 
of the place where we were encamped, that any very 
intense desire of, or strong belief in, a supernatural 
personal Immortality is, as a matter of clear historical 
fact, not a universal and permanent, but a partial, and 
so far as we can tell, temporary phenomenon of the 



Chap. I. 



THE WELLS OF MOSES. 



70 



human mind. I reflected that beliefs respecting 
Immortality have ever depended on, and varied with, 
beliefs respecting the Moral Sanction ; and that these 
again, have ever depended on, and varied with, the 
beliefs respecting God. In verification of this, it was 
more particularly recalled that the Mos£iic belief in 
Immortality was not belief in a continued personal 
supernatural existence, but in a continued tribal or 
national, natural existence ; that this belief depended 
on belief in the Moral Sanction as confined to this life ; 
and this belief, again, on belief in an almighty super- 
natural personal Being named Yahveh, directly inter- 
fering in Israelitish affairs to punish the Evil and reward 
the Good. I further reflected that, when experience 
had, at length, made belief in just individual punish- 
ment and reward in this life, impossible ; it was belief 
in God as an almighty supernatural personal Being, 
punishing and rewarding, that must chiefly have caused 
the belief that then originated in a supernatural per- 
sonal Immortality. This too, seemed to be verified by 
all the historical facts I could recall, and especially by 
the facts connected with the origin of Christianity. 
And the consideration of the primitive Judaic doctrine 
of Immortality, thus leading to the consideration of the 
characteristic Judaic conception of God ; it burst upon 
me, at length, that, here on the^legendary scene of the 
first entrance of the Hebrews on the World-stage, I 
was on the legendary scene also of the first entrance 
on the World-stage of that Semitic God not only still 
the common object of the adoration of Jews and 
Arabs, but of those Aryans also on whom, through 



•so 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



Ohristianism, and Islamism, they have imposed his 
yoke ; and thus, not only on the scene of an event 
of the highest importance in the Biblical history of 
Man, but of an event of the highest importance in that 
biography of God which constitutes the Biblical philo- 
sophy of the history of Man. 

But further, about the same time that this Philo- 
sophy and this History were getting into shape, namely, 
in the Sixth and Fifth centuries B.C., under the suc- 
cessors of the first editor of the Pentateuch legends — 
Samuel, probably, the seer of Eamah, — the founda- 
tions of another Philosophy were being laid by Thales, 
the sage of Miletus, and of another History of Man- 
kind, by Herodotus, the traveller of Halicarnassus. Of 
the former History, the foundation is legend ; of the 
latter, research : of the former the aim is the glori- 
fication of a God named ; Yahveh/ and his self-styled 
4 Peculiar ' and 6 Chosen People ; ' of the latter, the 
aim is to ensure £ that the actions of Men may not be 
effaced by time, nor the great and wondrous deeds 
displayed both by Greek and Barbarians, deprived of 
renown.' By the one Philosophy, the Causes of Things 
are found in the supposed passions, motives, and de- 
signs of an hypothetical almighty supernatural Person ; 
by the other, in those actual relations of Things to each 
other, discovered by research, and obedience to the rule 
TvuOi aeavrov — 4 Know Thyself : ' by the one, there 
are seen in phenomena the interventions of a Super- 
natural Will ; by the other, the sequences of Natural 
Facts. Of the former History and Philosophy, the 
Christian Philosophy of History is the completed de- 



Chap. I. 



THE WELLS OF MOSES. 



81 



velopment ; of the other, the still uncompleted deve- 
lopment is the New Philosophy of History : of the 
former, the essential principle may be defined as that 
of Miracle in its most absolute form — the conception 
of the determination of events, by a single supernatural 
personal Being outside of, and separate from, yet ever 
interfering with Nature, or the System of Things ; of 
the latter, the essential principle may be defined as 
that of Law in its most developed form — the concep- 
tion of it as discoverable, not only in Things, but in 
Thought, and hence in the development of our concep- 
tions of Things. 

Now these two different and indeed antithetical 
conceptions of Causation and of History, thus approxi- 
mately contemporaneous in their first explicit develop- 
ment, came at length into direct antagonism in the 
Alexandrian conflict of Neo-Platonism and Christian- 
ism. 1 The conception of Miracle derived from that 
conception of God which is peculiar to, and distinc- 
tive of, those three religions of Judaism, Christian- 
ism, and Islamism, which honour Samuel as the first 
of the Prophets, 2 has, since that Alexandrian conflict, 
incalculably influenced, and perhaps, on the whole, 
by its antagonism, greatly furthered the development 
of the conception of Law. And hence, as the scene 
of a Miracle of which the legend, instead of being 
treated as a Greek would have treated it, became one 
of the chief bases of a History and of a Philosophy, 

1 See "below, Part III. ch. i. 

2 Very curiously, however, Samuel has the reputation among the 
Samaritans of having been an infidel and a magician. See Stanley, in 
Smith's Dictionary of the Bible, sub voce. 

Gr 



82 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Past II. 



the struggle of which with that other History derived 
from Herodotus, and that other Philosophy derived 
from Thales, is the innermost and most important of 
the contentions of our present Eevolutionary Period, — 
these upper shores of the Eed Sea and Wells of Moses 
cannot but have, for the traveller of true Aryan culture, 
a large, real, and scientific interest, utterly dwarfing 
that offspring of Semitic superstition, and educated 
blindness, the puerile, visionary, and ecclesiastical in- 
terest felt, or pretended by Christian Pilgrims. 

Not, then, because of what, — in face of the 
proved historical generalisation that narratives of 
Miracle are records, not of former facts of Nature, but 
of early states of Mind, — is the merely ignorant and 
childish belief in the actuality of a miraculous passage 
through the midst of the Sea between, as in the case 
also of the passage of the Jordan, walls of water on the 
right hand and on the left, 1 ' — not because of such a 
belief did the scene of the song of Moses and the chil- 
dren of Israel now appear to me of profound interest 
to the historical student. Nor did it appear of such 
interest because of the curiousness of speculation or 
inquiry respecting what may have been the precise 
locality of the passage of the Israelites to the Asiatic 
Continent, and the actual natural effects of concurrent 
wind and tide, 2 which were magnified by the mythic 
imagination of a barbarian horde into the gathering-up 
of the waters 6 with the blast of the nostril of the Lord,' 
so that 4 the floods stood upright as an heap, and the 

1 Compare Exodus xiv. 29, and Joshua iii. 16. 

2 See Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, vol. i. p. 37. 



Chap. I. 



THE WELLS OF MOSES. 



83 



depths were congealed in the heart of the sea.' 1 Not 
because of such puerile belief, or trivial curiosity, did 
it that night appear to rne that the scene, or reputed 
scene, of the song of Moses and the children of Israel 
after the passage of the Eed Sea, must ever have for 
the historical student a profound interest. My opinion 
as to the legendary character of the record of the 
Exodus and Desert-wanderings of the Israelites, and 
as to the lesser interest, for men of Aryan race, of the 
traditions of a Semitic people, was still much the same 
as when, at Cairo, it almost led me to decline Mr. 
Buckle's proposal that I should join him in his journey 
through the Deserts of Sinai and Idumsea. Unchanged 
were also still the feelings which, even here, at the 
Wells of Moses, had prevented so much as an allu- 
sion to the passage of the Eed Sea, in my conversa- 
tion with Mr. Buckle, — the feeling of wonder at the 
educated credulity of those who, even while on the 
spot they have an opportunity of realising the legend 
as, in all its particulars, an actual occurrence, still 
seriously talk of the Eed-Sea-story of Exodus as if it 
had occurred literally as related ; the feeling of con- 
tempt at the feminine illogicality and foolish incohe- 
rency of those who, while still professing belief in a 
miracle-working God, anxiously endeavour to explain 
the 4 walls of water on the right hand and on the left,' 
as having possibly been, in fact, not so very miracu- 
lous after all ; 2 the feeling of loathing at the base dis- 

1 Exodus xv. 8. 

2 For suppose this made out in the case of the Eed Sea, how is the 
similar, but still more marvellous story of the river Jordan to he 
explained ? 

q 2 



84 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



honesty of those who, while the whole context of their 
knowledge proves them to be 6 paltering in a double 
sense,' cant about the c Sacred Narrative.' These feel- 
ings and opinions were still unchanged. And yet I 
would hope that I have, at least, suggested grounds on 
which, not only a more real, but a more profound 
historical interest than ever may now be attached to 
the Wells that commemorate the first entrance on the 
World-stage, at once, of the Hebrews, and of Yahveh. 

But see the consequences of this new view that 
has burst upon us of the true historical interest of 
Ayun Musa as the legendary scene of the first entrance 
on the World- stage of that supernatural Being, com- 
monly denoted by the term £ God,' and the conception 
of whom we owe to the Hebrews : — see the immense 
consequences with reference to the great controversy 
of these days between those who would still defend 
the conception of Miracle, and those who would far- 
ther extend the conception of Law. Evidently the 
question as to the truth of Miracles must henceforth be 
debated as but part of the larger and profounder ques- 
tion as to the actuality of the existence of that super- 
natural personal Being, whose acts Miracles are. Nor 
is this only clear, but clear also the method by which 
this question must be treated, and the problem of the 
actual occurrence of such events, and the actual ex- 
istence of such a Being solved, For the result of re- 
search as to the origin, is now acknowledged as, at 
least, one of the chief tests of the validity, of a belief 
or conception. In such historical facts, therefore, as 
those just indicated in pointing-out the grounds of the 



Chap. I. 



THE WELLS OF MOSES. 



85 



true historical interest of the Wells of Moses, we 
have the means of applying this test to the current 
popular conceptions of God, and of contributing, at 
least, to the solution of the question as to whether any 
such supernatural Being actually exists, and actually, 
in Miracles, manifests his existence. The discussion 
of Miracles thus not only merges in the discussion of a 
far profounder question ; but the discussion of both 
questions is removed from that airy region of mere 
vague declamation and futile talk, in which it has 
hitherto been conducted, to the solid ground where 
conclusions are based on verifiable historical and psy- 
chological facts. All questions as to the possibility 
of the truth of Miracles, or as to the possibility of 
the existence of a supernatural personal Being are 
thus dismissed as almost as foolish a waste of time as 
the kindred 4 possibility '-questions of the Mediseval 
Schools. The historical point of view substitutes for 
questions of c possibility,' questions of 4 fact.' For bar- 
ren speculations and idle subtleties as to the possibility 
of such events as 4 Miracles,' the possibility of such an 
existence as that commonly denoted by the term 4 God,' 
is substituted historical inquiry as to the origin of 
narratives of Miracles, the origin of such a conception 
as the Judseo-Christian one of God. And from the 
ascertained facts of the subjective origin of these concep- 
tions, we shall have some means of drawing assured 
conclusions as to their objective validity ; as to the 
probability, that is, of their being, in JNature, Events, 
or, above Nature, an Existence, corresponding to these 
conceptions of Miracles, and of God. 



86 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



And recurring to the question with respect to a 
supernatural Immortality, we must now see the immense 
bearings on the whole subject of the memories of the 
place where we were this night encamped, — the Wells 
of Moses. And it cannot but appear singular that here, 
of all places in the world, Mr. Buckle should, with so 
much confidence, have urged his ' argument from the 
affections.' For how suggestive is the fact — if we are 
to believe that there is any kernel of fact at all in the 
Exodus-story, — the fact that the doctrine of a super- 
natural Immortality, though known to, should have 
been discarded by, Moses ; and the fact that the 
Hebrews not only in the patriarchal age, but down 
almost to the time of the Babylonish Captivity, found 
the doctrine of a natural Immortality — an Immortality 
in their posterity — sufficient for all the requirements 
of their affections. 

Do not such facts, indeed, lead to the conclusion 
that, as Immortality has, in the Past, been otherwise 
conceived and desired than in the Present, otherwise also 
it may be conceived and desired in the Future ? Is not 
weight given to this conclusion by a general survey of 
the various modes in which this doctrine has been his- 
torically held ; and particularly by the fact that, even 
when the desire of, and belief in, the immortal con- 
tinuance of a memoried personal existence arose, it 
was not universal among civilised peoples, but charac- 
teristic only of the West, while equally characteristic 
of the East was, and is, the aspiration to an utter ex- 
tinction of memoried personal existence? And yet 
further, should not such facts, and especially when we 



Chap. I. 



TELE WELLS OF MOSES. 



87 



consicler the close connection that has ever existed 
between the form of the theory of, and belief in Im- 
mortality, with the form of the theory of, and belief 
in God, — should not such facts thus considered lead 
us to conclude that nothing worth saying can now be 
said on the subject till a Law of History — a Law of 
the Development of Consciousness — be discovered, by 
which we may judge the value of the past forms of 
the theories of, and beliefs in both Immortality and 
God, and predict their probable future transforma- 
tions ? 

Not yet, however, had that Law been fully disco- 
vered which I have elsewhere stated, and indicated, at 
least, the means of verifying. Still, though unable, as 
yet, to adduce for it the only sort of proof of which it 
is capable, — accordance, namely, with a verified Law 
of Human Development, — a conception of Immortality 
had already dawned on me which prevented any per- 
sonal regret arising from the manifest weakness of Mr. 
Buckle's arguments for a form of the doctrine, derived 
but from the primitive philosophy of Spiritism. But 
it was now past midnight ; and so, turning, at length, 
into my tent, in sleep was extinguished that feeling 
which had been given, less by the circumstance of its 
being the first night passed in the Desert, than by the 
thoughts which had chanced to occupy me — the feel- 
ing, the ■ profound consciousness of the nature of the 
scene and environment of earthly life, — a now star- 
illumed, now cloud-canopied World-desert. 

We were up at six o'clock the following morning, 
but the various first-day difficulties in apportioning 



88 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



the baggage for the camels delayed our departure till 
half-past eight o'clock. Then Mr. Buckle, having 
yesterday, in his ride hither, finally satisfied himself 
that 4 the ship of the Desert ' was not for him, was 
helped on his donkey, and I mounted my dromedary. 
And so we began our journey not improbably in the 
real, and certainly in, at least, the legendary track of 
that exodus of Egyptian slaves of mixed, but predomi- 
nantly Semitic race, which various synchronisms would 
seem to fix in the reign of Hemes es the Great, and 
about 1320 B.C. 

And as we journeyed, there went before us by day 
the Sheykh of our Arabs to lead us the way ; and by 
night we were given light by a pillar of fire, which had 
its base in our camp-fires, and its capital in the zenith- 
stars. Nor did it seem likely that the Israelites had 
other guidance by day, and other illumination by night. 
Nay, that men, — not at home, and following as in a 
dream, where everything is possible, the Forty-years- 
wanderings of the Israelites, but following through 
actual deserts the very track of these wanderings, as — 
so far at least as Sinai — we so probably do — that men 
should in these days, and here, literally and truly 
believe that the Israelites had such other day-guidance 
and night -illumination as is affirmed in the book of 
'Exodus,' seemed almost incredibly marvellous ; and 
that, not believing that the Israelites had such superna- 
tural day-guidance and night-illumination, they should 
pretend to believe it, or, refraining from not distinctly 
saying that they do not believe it, should permit it to 
be understood that they do believe it, seemed — ah, men 



Chap. I. 



THE WELLS OF MOSES. 



89 



otherwise truthful, manly, and honourable, do permit 
this to be understood, and, as it should certainly seem, 
falsely understood ; and it would appear wiser, there- 
fore, to endeavour to explain this to oneself by the 
complexity of human motives and character, than to 
give vent to expressions, however apparently justifiable, 
of indignation, and contempt. 

But so fully agreed were Mr. Buckle and I on the 
subject of Miracle, at least, that I have not only no note, 
but no remembrance even of a single remark, much less 
a discussion, on, or with any reference to, any one of the 
miracles of which we passed the sites ; except only, as 
we shall find in the sequel, that, on arriving at Horeb, 
he remarked on the singular correspondence of the 
natural features of the plain Er-Eahah with the descrip- 
tion in ' Exodus ' of the place of the Lawgiving ; and on 
leaving, I remarked on the tremendous revolution 
which will certainly be the result of a more widely- 
spread knowledge of the mere legendary character of 
those records, on the supposition of the inspired truth 
of which Christianity is based. To both of us, though 
in a somewhat different way, the interest of our journey 
in the track of the Israelites was that of men impressed 
equally with belief in the historic importance of the 
Jewish legends, and with disbelief in the reality of the 
miracles they record. Hence our discussions were on 
quite different subjects, topics on w r hich we did differ. 
And as it had become clear to me that all our differ- 
ences of opinion would be found reducible to differences 
in our fundamental logical conceptions ; and that it 
was, therefore, idle to argue on more superficial subjects 



00 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



till we had some understanding of each other's views 
on underlying questions ; I endeavoured, in the first 
weeks of our journey, at least, to keep our daily 
renewed discussions as much as possible confined to 
the great topics of Causation, Logic, and Method. And 
hence, as I have said, I find, in my Diary, copious 
notes on these subjects, but not a single remark of any 
kind on any of the Mosaic legends. 

But as, except to those utterly blinded by priestly 
education, or by selfish interests, few things, I believe, 
tend more to make such stories as those of 6 Exodus ' 
utterly incredible, than the mere natural Desert- 
journey itself, or an imaginative realisation of it, 
let me give an extract from a letter to my mother in 
which I find noted the routine of a day. ' Up at six 
o'clock ; outside, in the shade of the largest tent, at half- 
past six o'clock, breakfast — tea, eggs, curry, and what I 
would particularly recommend as making less meat, the 
next worst thing to much wine or beer, necessary, — 
rice, with camel's milk 1 and Scotch marmalade ; tents 
struck at seven o'clock, and we y — Mr. Buckle, the two 
boys, sons of a friend of Mr. Buckle's, and I — are off 
with half-a-dozen Arabs and servants, leaving the rest to 
pack up, and bring on the baggage. Mr. Buckle and 
I then walk for an hour or so before mounting, he his 
donkey, and I my dromedary. About eleven o'clock, 
rest in some shade if possible, and have a glass of water 
and some of Carr's biscuits. And about two o'clock, — 

1 'I must leave to chemical analysts to decide why this milk will not 
furnish butter, for such is the fact, and content myself with bearing 
witness to its very nutritious and agreeable qualities.' — Palgrave, Central 
Arabia, vol. i. p. 29. 



Chap. I. 



THE WELLS OF MOSES. 



01 



our day's work of talk on philosophical subjects which 
develope themselves in logical sequence from day to day 
being then reckoned over, — we lunch in a tent which 
has been sent forward. After a tchibouque, Mr. Buckle 
sleeps ; I note down the subjects and results of our talk, 
and the reflections to which it has given rise ; and the 
boys read, or play about. In the meantime, the baggage- 
camels have passed, and got ahead of us. We move 
again, between three and four o'clock ; have generally 
another walk ; at length descry, about six o'clock, our 
encampment for the night ; ride up, dismount, find 
dinner just ready, wash and sit down in the shade 
outside the tent at table. Preserved soups, meats, and 
vegetables ; with either a joint of one of our own 
sheep, or chickens, or a turkey, out of the hencoop one 
of the camels carries ; various sweets, with dates, figs, 
and raisins ; light sherry, or claret cooled in a tub in 
the shade ; and actually cold water from the zimzimiehs, 
make up our Desert-fare. Then, creaming Turkish 
coffee, cigars, and pleasant talk. Between nine and ten 
o'clock Mr. Buckle retires to his tent ; after a stroll 
through the camp-fires on the Desert, under the stars, I 
to mine ; and before eleven o'clock, all, except too 
often myself, are in bed.' Eeflect on all this, and see 
whether a realisation of what I may call the naturalism 
of a modern Desert-journey has not such a dissolving 
effect on belief in the supernaturalism of the narrative 
of that ancient one recorded in 'Exodus,' as that 
matter-of-fact exploration of Palestine is even already 
having, to the Fund for which so many pious souls have 
subscribed with hopes so woefully to be disappointed. 



92 



P1L GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt n. 



Confirmation will doubtless thus be got of most 
things in the Biblical narrative that could naturally have 
happened. But not one iota of proof, one may con- 
fidently predict, will be obtained of what these pious 
souls have paid to have proved — the miracles of the 
Biblical narrative. And yet, on the credibility of the 
occurrence of the Mosaic Miracles depends the credi- 
bility of the existence of the Semitic God. 



03 



CHAPTEE II. 

THE ALPS OF THE TtTR. 

Thus, then, we journeyed through those granite and 
sandstone Alps 1 of Sinai which are distinguished from 
the northern Tableland of the c Tih,' or the 6 Wander- 
ings,' by the name of the 6 Tur,' the general Arabic name 
for a high mountain. Wonderfully varied were these 
Alpine deserts. Yet it was but a variety of uniform 
and monotonous grandeur. And perhaps this is the 
distinguishing characteristic of all things sublime — 
variety in the presentation of a scene or idea of a grand 
simplicity. This remark, at least, which had first oc- 
curred to me in the Egyptian Oasis, seemed now con- 
firmed by this Sinaitic Desert. 

And assuredly, no more than ours, was the journey 
of the Israelites, in these Alps of the Tur, through a 
mere Dreamland. In journeying to Marah, which 
takes us, even as the Israelites, 2 about three days, a 
variety of natural incidents occur. We have, for in- 
stance, to struggle through a sandstorm — not by any 
means miraculous, though peculiar, as would appear, 

1 But the name of ' Alps ' is strictly applied only to highland pasture- 
lands enclosed by rocks or glaciers. In Sinai there is no clothing verdure, 
and its mountains are 'Alps unclothed.' 

2 Compare Exodus xv. 22, and Numbers xxxii. 8. 



94 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt II. 



to this part of the Desert, — through we have to 
struggle, walking blindfold ; with our heads en- 
veloped in kafeeyehs, or sitting with our faces to the 
tails of our dromedaries, who, poor beasts, as well as 
the baggage-camels, move painfully on, with their long 
necks sideways to the blast-driven sheets of blinding 
sancl. But scarcely do we repine at this, so incal- 
culably is the feeling of the Desert heightened by this 
tempest of wind, and these driving clouds of sand 
below, and vapour above, apparently mingling with 
each other. During a lull, an Arab with a camel is met, 
and there is a parley. We find that he is going to 
Cairo with provisions, being one of the people of a 
chief, about whom our curiosity is excited, but with 
little hope of having it gratified — as, however, a few 
days afterwards, in an ever-memorable adventure, it 
was. 

The next day we came to Ain Hawarah, the 
6 Fountain of Destruction/ a pool of water surrounded 
by a few stunted palms and a little thicket of the 
thorny ghurkud (nitrasia tridentata) ; and asking my 
dromedary-man to dip a little travelling- cup into it, he 
refuses, saying Murr, Murr ! 4 Bitter, bitter ! ' and then 
I remember that this is the spring identified with 
Marah. 1 Two hours further on, we entered the first of 
three wadys which, from the fountains of water and 
palm-trees in them, may claim to be Elim, or 4 The 

1 There is, however, another well, a little to the south of this, and 
near Tih-el-Aniara, so bitter that neither man nor camel can drink of it. 
— Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 37, note 4 ; and Palmer, Desert of the 
Exodus, vol. i. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUP. 



95 



Trees,' where the Israelites pitched after removing from 
Marah. These fountained glens are now named Wady 
Ghurundel, Wady Useit, and Wady-et-Taiyibeh, or the 
' Good ' Wady, because of its wells. Not, however, one 
of them only, but either the first, or last two may, with 
almost equal probability, be assumed to have been Elim. 1 
And the Israelites and we were now in quite a new 
variety of Desert : — wild and desolate mountains, inter- 
sected by glens, like great dry riverbeds, of which the 
sides are here and there fringed with shrubs, — feathery 
tamarisks, tangled acacias, and stunted palms with 
hairy bodies, and dishevelled heads, of which, however, 
the exact enumeration, ■ three score and ten,' is very 
significant. With Wady-et-Taiyibeh I was so especially 
struck, that I made a sketch of it during part of our 
long midday rest in passing through. And it was not 
without fruitful reflection that, along this great dry 
gully, under its precipitous walls of jagged-peaked 
mountains, I saw the ' Chosen People ' encamped, — the 
barbarous tribes of the Beni-Israel, 4 the leprous 
people ' of Manetho, 2 the escaped slaves of the Egyp- 
tians. See them there, the women drudging to and 
from the bushy springs, the men loafing about, and now 
and again both men and women rushing-together when 
a frequent quarrel or dispute arises. 

On Mr. Buckle's awaking from his long siesta, we 
moved on again ; and after a few hours' journey, sud- 
denly came down on the Sea. And by the Sea we 

1 Compare Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, pp. 20, 37, 69, 519 ; and 
Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, vol. i. p. 31. 

2 See Josephus Adv. Ap. i. 26, 27. 



06 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



encamped even as the Israelites on removing from 
Elim. For myself, however, I confess, that almost all 
the historic interest of the place was lost sight of in 
the impression made by the mere physical scene itself. 
Yet it was only a seashore girt with cliffs of various- 
coloured strata, and with shadowy hills in the dim 
distance across the Sea. There was, indeed, also a 
solitary ship at anchor, and a boat's crew of Lascars 
ashore. But still, what was there in all this to give 
the scene that inexpressible strangeness, weirdness, 
and romance, with which it impressed itself indelibly 
on my memory ? Certainly the single ship made the 
solitude of the Sea more impressive. The Indian 
Lascars gave a far-away look to the shore. The Desert- 
hills that, in strata of many wonderful hues, rose above 
the beach, had behind them the Unknown. And over 
all was a vast bright stillness. Yet I know not whether 
it was these physical facts, or some speciality of passing 
mood that chiefly contributed to that rare entrance- 
ment in which that magic of Nature, into which one 
is initiated by Celtic poesy, is so inexpressibly felt, — 
that magic of Nature of which the feeling is best of 
all, in the poesy of the Celtic, and Anglo-Celtic races, 
expressed. 

This feeling of Nature's magic may be in some degree 
perhaps realised, if the reader will recall, and try to 
penetrate to, and sympathise with the feeling expressed 
in such tales of the Arthurian Eomance-cycle as that, 
for instance, of Peredur's meditation, by the hermit's 
cell in the forest, on the woodpigeon that had been 
killed by a hawk, and lay bleeding on the snow, with 



Chat. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



07 



a raven standing over it ; 1 or in such passages as that 
of Keats 2 — 

. . . . magic casements opening on the foam 
Of perilous seas in fairy lands forlorn — 

or that of Shakespeare 3 — 

On such a night 
Stood Dido, with a willow in her hand 
Upon the wild sea-bank, and waved her love 
To come again to Carthage. 4 

And if there is in poesy a Marvellous which Science 
can accept, it is assuredly this of the Celts. For with 
them, as we must at once see from the above examples, 
the principle of the Marvellous is in Nature itself, 
its hidden forces, its inexhaustible fecundity. It is a 
Marvellous which, in its perfect naturalism, requires, 
for the feeling of it, only an indefinite faith in the 
possible, the capacity of a synthetic consciousness of 
the whole, and belief hi the existence of beings, carrying 
in themselves the principle of their force. And it thus 
not only differs from those personifications of the life 
of Nature, which form the bases of the mythologies of 
India and of Greece ; but is utterly antagonistic to that 
monotheistic and Christian conception in which the 
Marvellous is only Miracle, and extraordinary beings 
are necessarily either angels or devils. 5 So antagonistic, 
indeed, is this Celtic feeling of Nature's magic to that 

1 Guest (Lady Charlotte), Mabinogion, vol. i. pp. 324 & 328. 

2 Ode to the Nightingale. 

3 Merchant of Venice, act v. sc. i. 

4 These passages are also cited by Mr. Matthew Arnold, as illustra- 
tions of the ' natural magic ' distinctive of Celtic and Anglo-Celtic 
poesy, and no better occur to me. See his Study of Celtic Literature, 
p. 168. 

5 Compare Renan, Poesie des Races Celtiques in Essais de Morale et de 
Critique, pp. 413-16. 

H 



98 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



Semitic conception of Nature which is at the core of 
all Christian doctrines, that, if one is capable of being 
thus entranced by Nature, utterly abhorrent becomes 
to one such a Jew-magic as that of Sinai. And so, as 
the sinking Sun was shedding on earth those beams 
which chiefly reveal that Wonderland of reality to 
which our dull senses are ordinarily closed, — 

Die Geisterwelt ist nicht verschlossen, 
Dein Sinn ist zu, dein Herz ist todt, 1 — 

I got down to the Sea to bathe amid the magic 
of it all — though dissuaded by Mr. Buckle on account 
of sharks. And indeed, after floating for a time in 
entranced enjoyment, I did observe a long dark object 
under the water, and making towards me. But in 
an inappreciable moment after observing whatever it 
was, it occurred to me that I had been just about my 
usual time in the water. So, I cannot positively say 
whether it was a shark or not. 

The next day I had again the delight of floating 
on the Sea amid a strange and beautiful scene. Then 
we wound round the headland of Zelima, the camels 
and dromedaries splashing through the pellucid water 
that gently surged on the low cliffs. After a time, 
turning inland, we entered on the plain of Murkah, 
and on that part of the Desert which seems, with most 
probability, to be identified 2 with that Wilderness of 
Sin in which the Israelites first had that daily supply 
of Manna rained upon them on which, according to 

1 Faust, to himself, before the Earth-spirit (very naturally) appears. 

2 Compare Porter, Handbook for Syria and Palestine, vol. i. p. 22 ; 
Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, pp. 38 and 70 ; and Palmer, Desert of the 
Exodus, vol. i. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



99 



the wonderful tale, they subsisted for forty years, till 
it suddenly ' ceased on the morrow after they had 
eaten of the old corn of the land ' 1 of Canaan. In- 
stead, however, of journeying on along the coast, and 
the plain of El Kaa, as the Israelites probably did, 
encamping there, and then c taking our journey out of 
the Wilderness of Sin, and encamping in Dophkah,' 2 at 
the mouth, as I suppose, of Wacly Feiran ; we followed 
the usual route of travellers, and crossing the plain of 
Murkah, in a north-easterly direction, lunched at the 
entrance of a fine ravine ; and then plunged into those 
Alpine passes which, though leading more directly to 
the head of Wacly Feiran, — to be identified, I think, 
with Alush, 3 where the Israelites encamped after they 
departed from Dophkah, — would certainly be avoided 
by any decent dragoman, or c Pillar of Cloud,' having 
a mixed multitude with women, children, and cattle, 
under his, or its charge. And it was here, therefore, a 
somewhat unreflecting fancy of Miss Martineau's, — 
though almost anywhere else in the Desert it would 
have been fine and true, — picturing to herself 6 the 
Hebrew mothers with their sucking babes ; the Hebrew 
fathers with their fevered children imploring water ; 
and the clamour and despair of the slavish multitude, 
whose hope and courage had been extinguished by that 
bondage which yet left their domestic affections in all 
their strength.' 4 

Little caring, however, to amuse ourselves with 

1 Josh. v. 12. 

2 Numbers xxxiii. 12. 

3 Ibid. 18. 

4 Eastern Life, Past and Present, pp. 3-16- -7. 

h 2 



100 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



such pictures, we went on with our general discussion of 
Causation and Method. Among the particular subjects 
discussed during the journey of this morning and fore- 
noon I find noted — the question as to the Transmutation 
or Fixity of Races and Species ; the idea of a First Cause ; 
the belief in a Spiritual World ; the relations of In- 
duction and Deduction ; the necessity of their union in 
a complete Method ; the characteristic of Scottish Philo- 
sophy ; and the place of Eeid in the history of that 
school. The logical sequence of these various subjects 
it may not be uninteresting to point out. 

There was no difference of opinion between us 
with respect to the general theory of Transmutation as 
opposed to that of Fixity, except that I thought the 
former theory had still to receive its limits in such a 
more complete application of the conception of Mutual 
Determination as would, I believed, lead to a theory of 
Correlative Origins. But glancing at that theory of 
successive creations implied in the theory of the Fixity of 
Species, we were naturally led to the discussion of the 
grounds of belief in a Creator, or First Cause. In a 
Causa Causarum Mr. Buckle expressed his belief, but 
confessed that he did not arrive at it by any process of 
reasoning satisfactory to himself. 1 And so, with 
reference to a Spiritual World, he had an emotional 
persuasion, rather than an intellectual conviction, of the 
existence of such a world, and that we shall recognise 
one another in the Future State. 2 But the theory of a 
First Cause could hardly be discussed without allusion 
to Paley's attempt to introduce the Inductive Method 

1 See Appendix B. 2 Ibid. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUR. 



101 



into Theology. The issue of this attempt in the famous 
argument from Design, Mr. Buckle considered alto- 
gether futile. 1 I agreed with him. But I thought 
that the development lately taken by the principle of 
the Conservation of Energy had given such new breadth 
and clearness to the conception of Causation as Eeci- 
procity or Mutual Determination, as to make of it 
almost a new conception of Causation. And it seemed 
to me that, in the full development of this conception 
of Mutual Determination, the notion of a First Cause — 
the notion, that is, of a Cause outside the System itself 
of Things — would altogether vanish. 2 

Telling him then of the new inquiry into Causa- 
tion which I had begun in an inductive investigation 
of the simplest class of phenomena, those, namely, of 
Motion ; Mr. Buckle launched- out on the relations of 
Induction and Deduction, and on that combination of 
these two, not hostile, but complementary Methods, 

1 ' Paley and his successors, enlarging the scheme which Kay and 
Derhani had feebly sketched, endeavoured, by a skilful emplojnnent of the 
inductive method, to compensate their party for the failure of the 
deductive one. But their project, though ably conceived, has come to 
naught. It is now generally admitted that nothing can be made of it, 
and that it is impossible to establish the old theological premises by a 
chain of inductive reasoning.' — History of Civilisation, vol. ii. pp. 412-13. 
Kant's refutation of all the theological arguments for the existence of 
a Supreme Being outside of Nature remains still untouched. His con- 
clusion, as is well known, was, that the existence of such a Being can 
neither be proved nor disproved. And unsupported, therefore, by reason- 
ing, the notion is at the mercy of the heart, that has in any degree ade- 
quately realised the fact of the existence of Evil. 

2 ' The First Cause argument is in itself of no value for the estab- 
lishment of Theism : because no cause is needed for the existence of that 
which has no beginning ; and both Matter and Force have had, so far as 
our experience can teach us, no beginning.' — Mill, Essays on Religion , 
p. 153. 



102 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



into a single system which we shall eventually have 
when all the resources of Science are at length fully 
developed and marshalled into order. 1 This recalled 
to me what he had said on the same subject in his 
lecture on the 6 Influence of Women ; ' 2 and he was 
pleased to hear of the deep impression that lecture had 
made on me, and of the stimulating effect it had had. 
( Never,' as I said, 4 should I forget the walk home 
after it, through Berkeley Square, to the rooms I then 
had in Mount Street.' 

Then, commending the aim, at least, of that method 
of a new inquiry into Causation in which I hoped to 
unite both methods, Mr. Buckle remarked on what 
had been, as he considered, the characteristic method 
hitherto of the philosophical researches of my country- 
men — the deductive. 3 The fact of the anti-theological 
philosophy of Scotland having adopted the theological 
method, appeared to Mr. Buckle a remarkable proof 
of the hold which the theological spirit had taken 
of the Scottish mind. It is unnecessary here to 
note anything of what I said in questioning this 
position. But Mr. Buckle next remarked on the very 
inferior place which both Eeid and Stewart, — inferior 
place compared with that pre-eminent one which has 
been too often assigned to them, — really occupy in 
the history of the development of the Scottish intellect. 
With this I most cordially agreed. For such had been 

1 Compare History of Civilisation, vol. ii. p. 41. 

2 See Miscel. and Posth. Works, vol. i. p. 14. 

3 See the remarks of Dr. Stirling, in his article on the History of 
Civilisation in the North American Review, July, 1872. 



Chap. II. THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 103 

my own conclusion when, freed from the forced 
studies of those text-books, unfortunately, of the philo- 
sophical class at the University, I got into the deeper 
waters and larger atmosphere of Hume. 

But we had now crossed the stony plain of Murkah, 
and found the luncheon-tent pitched at the mouth of 
Wady Shellal. In the afternoon we ascended this grand 
pass, and chiefly on foot. For it was in fact a long 
zigzag staircase, steep and often very narrow, through a 
succession of gorges. Far overhead, were the red sum- 
mits of the granite mountains ; in midway crevices, 
shrubby palm-trees, and festoons of the caper plant ; and 
here and there, at the base of the cliffs, green bushes 
and tufts of grass. At the end of one of these gorges or 
narrow wadys, we encamped for the night, in a scene, 
the grandest by far in which we had yet pitched our 
tents. Above us rose majestic precipices, and we were 
narrowly encompassed by vast granite mountains. 
Imagine the scene when the sunset-splendours had died 
away from the azure heavens and the red mountain- 
summits ; and when, from the bottom of our rocky 
pit, the fitful blaze of our camp-fires, and the deep 
shadows of Earthly Night, one looked up to the starry 
Day of the Universe ! 

Leaning, heavily as usual, on my arm as we walked 
up and down together under the stars, Mr. Buckle, 
recurring to the later subject of our forenoon discussion, 
asked me what I personally thought of his treatment 
of Scottish history. I thought it unnecessary to say 
anything of the inadequacy, as it appeared to me, of 



104 



RIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



his general sketch of the history of Scotland ; 1 and 
replied only, but replied truly, that my chief feeling 
after reading it had been one of mingled admiration 
and gratitude for such generous appreciation, in his sixth 
chapter, of the intellectual achievements of Scottish 
thinkers as no other Englishman had ever shown. 2 

Mr. Buckle. But I meant rather to ask what you 
think of what has so much excited the indignation of 

1 There is, for instance, no discussion whatever of a topic which stands 
at the threshold of the history of Civilisation in every European country, 
— the extent to which it has been indebted to the institutions of the Roman 
Empire. Among the causes influencing Scottish history, that one, so much 
insisted on by Mr. Buckle, of the siding of the kings with the clergy against 
the nobles, is only one, and not a new fact : among other very important 
determining causes were Race, the Saxon and Norman immigrations, the 
wars with England, the French alliance, and commerce with the Low 
Countries. Nor is his account of the Reformation true : it was really 
much more of a popular movement than he admits. Nor is his picture 
of the religious fanaticism of the people truly the picture of more than a 
section, though a too powerful section of them : there has always been 
another section bitterly opposed to the clergy, and there was thus 
nothing really extraordinary in the sceptical literature of the 18th 
century. Finally, the double paradox which he affirms to be presented 
by the history of Scotland is a more than doubtful generalisation. 
Compare Professor Masson's criticism in Macmillaris Magazine, vol. iv. 
May— Oct. 1861 ; and that of Dr. Hill Burton in The Scotsman, Dec. 28, 
1861, and Jan. 1, 1862, republished in a brochure entitled Rhylax on 
Ruckle. 

2 i But we take it that, for all he has said against us — were it much 
more than it is — Mr. Buckle has secured to himself a warm corner in the 
Scottish heart by his appreciation of some of our great men. They are 
all dear to us ; and it is with some shame it must be confessed that 
none among ourselves have so thoroughly measured their greatness as 
this Englishman. His idolatry of Adam Smith is delightful; at an 
earlier period it might greatly have prejudiced his book. Such names 
as David Hume and James Watt may be considered safe ; but there is a 
sort of debt of national gratitude to the man who has done so much to 
bring into powerful light the influence, on the progress of science, of 
Joseph Black, John Hunter, Reid, Cullen, Hutton, and Leslie. "When- 
ever, in after times, these men's names appear in encyclopaedias and in bio- 
graphical dictionaries, the character of their scientific services will be re- 
gistered from the History of Civilisation.' 1 — Burton, Rhylax on Ruckle,^. 31. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



105 



your countrymen, the way in which I have written of 
the religious bigotry and intolerance of the mass of 
the Scottish clergy and people ? 

Author. Well, I do not know whether you have read 
as much of the popular and ballad literature of Scotland 
as you certainly have of its theological and religious 
literature ; but frankly, I think that, if you had dipped 
a paint-brush also in that pot, your picture of us would 
have been much more true. 

B. How would it have differed ? 

A. It would have shown that there was always in 
the Scottish Israel a remnant that had not bowed the 
knee to Yahveh. 

B. But I spoke of the mass of the people, and had 
nothing to do with the characterizing of a fi remnant.' 

A. But that 'remnant,' though, of course, it has 
varied in number and influence, has always, I think, 
been very considerable. And if it is pointed- out that, 
in no European country, save Spain, has there been 
such bigotry and intolerance as in Scotland ; it should, 
I think, also be pointed-out that, in no other country 
than Scotland, has there been so strong and bitter an 
under-current of protest against the dogmas and pre- 
tensions of the clerical party. 1 To take an instance : — 

1 ' "While there was, on one side, a frantic fanaticism which has shocked 
Mr. Buckle, there was, on the other, an amount of profane ribaldry 
which, doubtless, he would find equally shocking. If it be difficult to 
find a parallel to the idolatry with which one part of Scotland treated 
the Presbyterian clergy, there is at the same time probably no other 
civilised nation where members of the reverend profession have been 
subjected to like contumely. The great mass of the scurvy jests of our 
ancestors, their roysterous ditties, and their " capital," but not improving 
stories, had a minister or an elder for their butt.' — Burton, Phylax on 
Buckle, p. 21. 



106 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt II. 



Some of your strongest proofs of bigotry and intole- 
rance are from the Kirk-Session and other Eecords of 
Aberdeen. But Aberdeen has also been, from time 
immemorial, notorious for its having, both in burgh and 
shire, a very an ti- clerical and anti-covenanting party 
indeed. 

B. Well, though I don't happen to have mentioned 
it in the notes to my book, I perfectly remember a case 
in Wodrow, known also through Swift, of the prela- 
tical mob of Aberdeen hounding-out a fellow on the 
Sabbath to meet the Eev. David Williamson, and dance 
and sing before him to a tune called 6 Daintie Davie,' 
which was a nickname the reverend gentleman had 
received. The story ends with telling us that, Mr. 
Williamson having said, ' Alas, for that poor man ! he 
is now rejecting the last offer he is ever to have of 
Christ,' the man did actually die before night. And 
though such a story is, of course, evidence of the ut- 
terly horrible pretensions of the clergy ; it is also, no 
doubt, evidence of the existence of a very considerable 
opposition to them, and particularly, as you say, in 
Aberdeen. But then, what I maintain is, that this 
was but an undercurrent that only here and there and 
occasionally affected the surface of things ; and hence, 
that it was unnecessary for me, in my general histo- 
rical sketch, to draw any special attention to it. Your 
own Chambers, in his 6 Domestic Annals of Scotland,' 1 
remarks on the absence of external appearances of joy 
in Scotland ; says, ' The whole sunshine of life was, 
as it were, squeezed out of the community ; ' and di- 

1 Vol. i. p. 336, and vol. ii. p. 156. 



Chap. II. THE ALPS OF THE T*UR. 107 

rectly attributes this to the overmastering power of the 
clerical party. 

A. But even a minority with a clear and positive 
faith will impress much of its own tone and colour on 
a majority. How much more, then, will a majority 
have such an influence on even a very considerable 
minority. And more than such a minority, I do not, 
of course, pretend that the remnant was, that had not 
bowed the knee to Yahveh. 

B. I think that, as many of the passages, which I 
have quoted in support of my indictment of bigotry 
and intolerance, contain evidence also of the existence 
of such a remnant as you speak of, I have thus suffi- 
ciently brought it under the notice of the reader. 

A. If I may venture to say so, it is that ' suffi- 
ciently ' that I doubt. For I think it would have been 
desirable that you had drawn your picture of us from 
our ballad and popular, as well as from our theological 
and religious literature, not merely because, as I be- 
lieve, a more complete, and therefore truer picture 
would have been thus presented. Chiefly, I think, this 
would have been desirable because, as it appears to 
me, a somewhat truer view would thus, perhaps, have 
been given of the rise of that sceptical literature of the 
eighteenth century of which you have given so splendid 
an account. 

B. I have said that it was a reaction against that 
theological spirit which predominated during the seven- 
teenth century ; that such a reaction would hardly have 
been possible except the mental stagnation, naturally 
caused by superstition, had been prevented by the 



108 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IT. 



political activity which produced the rebellion against 
the Stuarts ; and that, when the contest was ended, the 
faculties which, for three generations, had been exer- 
cised in resisting the executive authority, sought other 
employment, and found it now in rebellion, not to 
political, but to ecclesiastical tyranny. 1 

A. Well, but how could there have been such a 
reaction, and how could there have been such a change, 
if there had not existed among the people already a 
strong anti-clerical feeling and sceptical tendency ? 
Except, therefore, the long-continued existence of such 
a feeling and such a tendency is brought into promi- 
nent notice, the rise of the sceptical Scottish literature 
of the eighteenth century will hardly, I think, appear 
fully explained ; and it will certainly appear far more 
disconnected with the national life and character than, 
as I believe, it really was. Nor is this a point of mere 
speculative importance. For I cannot but think that, 
in reference to the present revolutionary conflict, it is of 
great practical importance to show that the clergy are, 
and have been, the mouthpieces of but one, though 
hitherto certainly the predominant, section of the 
Scottish people ; and that even the boldest of the 
Scottish thinkers of the eighteenth century, and of 
those who may carry on their work, do but give phi- 
losophical expression to a scepticism which, since 
at least the first dawn of the Eeformation, has been 
as characteristic of one section of the people as 
bigotry of the other. In a word, I think that it not 
only may, but ought to be shown, that that anti- 

1 History of Civilisation, vol. ii. 410. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



109 



Christian, or, at least, anti-Theological school of thought 
which began with Hutcheson, Adam Smith, and Hume, 
and has latterly been carried on by the elder and 
younger Mill, Carlyle, and Bain, is not a movement 
entirely above the heads, and opposed to the sympa- 
thies of the Scottish people ; but a movement, on the 
contrary, that has all the authority of a deeply-rooted 
national development, 

B. I think that, if the sceptical literature of Scot- 
land had any such popular historical roots as you 
would maintain, it would have produced at least some, 
instead of, as would appear, no appreciable effect in 
lessening the popular religious illiberality. For I have 
challenged any one to contradict my assertion when I 
say that, at this moment, nearly all over Scotland, the 
finger of scorn is pointed at every man who, in the 
exercise of his sacred and inalienable right of free 
judgment, refuses to acquiesce in those religious notions, 
and to practise those religious customs, which time, 
indeed, has consecrated, but many of which are repul- 
sive to the eye of reason, though to all of them, how- 
ever irrational they may be, the people adhere with 
sullen and inflexible obstinacy. 1 And regarding this 

1 Vol. ii. p. 589. Already, though he knew it not, the challenge 
had been taken up, and by one of the most competent men in Scotland to 
reply to it. ' We take up the challenge/ says Dr. Hill Burton, ' and 

contradict the assertion altogether Take any two towns of the 

same size, the one in England and the other in Scotland, and we venture 
to assert that the latter will be found by far the more agreeable place of 
residence for an educated gentleman of enlightened and tolerant ideas. 
He will find in it more education, more boldness and originality of 
thought. The talk at table will not be so absolutely conventional, but 
will be enlivened by a subtler wit, and a more genial and racy humour. 
Above all, he will not find the same blind reverence for the syndics of 



110 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



non- effect of the sceptical literature of the Scotch as 
part of the double paradox presented by their history, 
I have shown that the failure of their literature in 
diminishing this illiberality was the result of the deduc- 
tive method adopted by the Scotch philosophers. 

A. Well, I must say, I question all that. I ques- 
tion whether the sceptical literature of Scotland, either 
because of its deductive method, or otherwise, has pro- 
duced less popular effect than that of England with 
its inductive method. And I question the finger of 
scorn being more generally pointed at a freethinker of 
tolerably decent conduct in Scotland than in England. 

B. But in what I have said as to the present state 
of opinion in Scotland, I have spoken, not on vague 
rumour, but on what I personally know to be the fact, 
and hold myself responsible for affirming. 

A. Well, you may be right. Very possibly my 
judgment may, in such a matter, be biassed by 
prejudice. But I think it is very difficult to form a 
correct judgment of the amount of latent scepticism 
in a people. For mere unbelief, however considerable 
the minority that harbours it, ordinarily takes care not 
to proclaim itself to the damage of worldly interests. 
Only unbelief that has become new-belief will clo that. 
All, therefore, that I venture to say is, that I am dis- 
posed to think that there is, and has always been, far more 
of Paganism in Scotland than you give us credit for. 

the place nor the same abject deification of wealth. To be sure, there are 
some little prejudices and peculiarities which it may be well to attend to. 
What nation has them not ? The English have them in abundance, 
though they are very intolerant of them in other people.' — Burton, Phylax 
on Buckle, p. 25. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



Ill 



Possibly, however — though I question this — the scep- 
tical literature of Scotland may, because of its method, 
have had no effect in increasing that admirable ism. 

B. But surely it is evident that if, in any civilised * 
nation, two men, equally gifted, were to propound 
some new and startling conclusion, and one of these 
men were to defend his conclusion by reasoning from 
ideas or general principles, while the other man were 
to defend his by reasoning from particular and visible 
facts, the latter man would gain most adherents. His 
conclusion would be more easily diffused, simply be- 
cause a direct appeal, in the first instance, to palpable 
facts, strikes the vulgar with immediate effect ; while 
an appeal to principles is beyond their ken, and as 
they do not sympathise with it, they are apt to ridicule 
it. The sensuous process, therefore, of working up- 
wards from particular facts to general principles, will 
always be more attractive than the ideal process of 
working downwards from principles to acts. 1 

A. Well, in a general way, one cannot, of course, 
but admit all that ; and your application of it is highly 
interesting and suggestive. But may it not, on the 
other hand, be said that, if a people have been accus- 
tomed to logical, though theological discussions, those 
of them who are drawn to science will be more at- 
tracted by a deductive, than by an inductive philosophy, 
and hence that, on them, a philosophy of the former, 
will have more effect than one of the latter kind? 
Besides, might not the failure in popular effect of such 
a philosophy be owing, not so much to its deductive 

1 Compare History of Civilisation, vol. ii. p. 580-3. 



112 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



method as to its negative character ? For, on a people 
accustomed to, and passionately requiring some great 
synthetic conception of human life and destiny, or 
ideal, would not a philosophy, giving such a concep- 
tion, have greater effect, notwithstanding a deductive 
method, than, notwithstanding an inductive method, a 
philosophy uncompleted by such a conception ? And 
such views seem to me driven home by the fact that, 
notwithstanding the popular unenlightenment due, as 
you say, to the deductive method of its philosophy, 
there have been, in Scotland, no such flagrant acts of 
intolerance as, notwithstanding the popular enlighten- 
ment that should have been caused by the inductive 
method of its philosophy, there have lately been in 
England — no such case, for instance, as that of Pooley, 
or as that of Holyoake, — quite irrelevantly questioned 
by an opponent at a public meeting, as to whether he 
believed in a personal God, and haled away immediately 
to prison on saying he did not. 

B. These are exceptional cases. The essential an- 
tagonism which still exists between the Scotch and 
English minds is, as I have pointed-out, better illus- 
trated by the letter of the Presbytery of Edinburgh to 
Lord Palmerston, suggesting the appointment of a 
general fast in order that the Cholera- epidemic of 
1853 might be stayed, and the English statesman's reply 
that, if they did not remove the causes and sources of 
contagion, the pestilence would only be aggravated, 
' in spite of all the prayers and fastings of a united but 
inactive nation.' 1 And surely you will not deny that 

1 Vol. ii. pp. 590-5. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



113 



these two letters are characteristic of the opposite states 
of opinion and feeling of the ruling majorities of the 
two countries ? 

A. No ; I will admit that if you like ; the more 
readily, because this admission will bring us at once to 
the second thing I would say with reference to the 
way in which you have written of the religious bigotry 
and intolerance of the mass of the Scottish clergy and 
people. I have said that I think it would have been 
in many ways desirable that you had brought into more 
prominent notice the fact of the historical existence 
of a much smaller, certainly, but almost equally 
vehement party antagonistic to the fanatical Christian 
section of the community. And now I would say 
that, as I think civilisation in Scotland, and its history, 
cannot be truly represented as a whole without taking 
due account of both these parties ; so, the fanatical 
Christian section cannot be truly judged except — ex- 
cept it is justified. 

B. Except it is justified? You would justify the 
Presbyterian clergy of Scotland and their supporters in 
their monstrous pretensions as self-styled c ambassadors 
of God ! ' in their impious denouncing of toleration 
as not far from blasphemy and atheism ; and in their 
horrible war against worldly pleasures — a war in which 
they scrupled not even to attack the most sacred human 
affections ! It makes one's blood surge again even to 
think of such things ; and surely I have misunderstood 
you? 

A. I think we should consider the justice of 

i 



114 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



the petition of Chaucer's Miller in the 'Canterbury 
Tales '— 

1 And therefore, if that I rnisspeeke or say, 
"Write it the ale of Southwerk, I you pray.' 

B. I don't quite see the relevancy of the quotation. 

A. These men had but drunk too deeply of dog- 
matic Christianity, and to it we should, I think, write 
down their misdeeds, excusing, or even justifying them. 

B. But strongly as I condemn the intolerance es- 
pecially that has been practised by Christians, I have 
not, nor would I by any means be understood as having, 
identified Christianity with the intolerance that has been 
practised in its name. 

A. Well, I think that the intolerance that has been 
practised by Christians should by the scientific historian 
be set down to dogmatic Christianity, or, in a word, 
Christianism, because intolerance is logically deducible 
from its original and characteristic affirmation that he 
only who believes a certain dogma with respect to Jesus 
of Nazareth shall be saved, and that he who believes it 
not shall be damned ; because, in other great contem- 
porary religions, we find fervid belief unaccompanied 
by intolerance ; and because, when toleration did arise 
in Christian communities, it was not founded on any 
distinctive Christian principle. 

B. To what other great contemporary religions do 
you allude ? 

A. To Brahmanism, to Islamism, and more espe- 
cially to Buddhism. Just compare the conduct of 
Christianity (so long as it had the power to do what 
it liked to Heretics and to Jews), with the conduct of 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUR. 



115 



Brahmanism to Buddhism, even in expelling it from 
India ; with the conduct even of Islamism to Unbe- 
lievers ; and still more with the conduct, throughout 
the two milleniums and a half nearly of its existence, 
of Buddhism to rival creeds or unorthodox sects. We 
shall then, I think, be obliged to confess that the 
intolerance we know most of in Europe has been, as a 
matter of historical fact, a distinctively Christian 
intolerance. 

B. I have not yet happened to study the history of 
Buddhism. 

A. No study can, I think, be more instructive with 
reference to the origin and character of Christianity as 
a great historical phenomenon. For Buddhism is the 
Eastern correlate of Christianity. And in the study of 
their moral and intellectual similarities and differences, 
we have all the light thrown on each which it is the 
prerogative of the Comparative Method to afford. 

B. Well, I fear that I must admit the truth of your 
other allegation, and that it was really out of expe- 
diency rather than principle that the toleration of 
Christian communities historically arose. 

A. Not in Christianity, therefore, which ever was — - 
as to this day, wherever it has the chance, it is, — 
bitterly anti-tolerationist, but in the prudence of self- 
interest, the principle of toleration, in Europe, ori- 
ginated. 1 But if so, then, the Scottish clergy whom 

1 ' Out of what, within Europe of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
centuries, was the practical form of the idea bred ? Out of pain, out of 
suffering, out of persecution • not pain inflicted constantly on one and 
the same section of men, nor any two opposed sections alternately, but 
pain revolving, pain circulated, pain distributed, till the whole round of 

i 2 



116 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



you so strongly condemn were, with their Christian 
beliefs, perfectly logical in declaring, shocking as it may 
sound to you, — that £ Toleration is not far from blas- 
phemy.' For the theory on which Toleration is founded 
by those who now maintain it, not as an expediency, 
but as a principle, does blaspheme all Christian beliefs. 

B. How do you make that out ? 

A. Well, surely if Toleration is maintained as a 
solidly-grounded principle, it can be so only as a 
corollary from the theory of historical Development. 
According to that theory, Christianity is as much a 
natural development of the human mind as any other 
religion ; and no more, therefore, than any other can 
it make good its claim to absolute truth and super- 
natural authority. It is held possible also for the 
adherents, not only of different sects of Christianity, 
but of other quite opposed religions, to lead moral 
lives, and be good citizens. And not only is eternal 
punishment not held to be the penalty of refusing to 
accept the Christian creed ; but other creeds than that of 
Christianity are held to correspond better with certain 
stages of intellectual development and social conditions, 
and so, to be better creeds for men in these stages. 
Consciously or unconsciously, these are the views on 
which Toleration, when maintained as a principle, is, 
in Europe, founded ; and such views do 6 blaspheme ' 
Christianity, if one holds orthodox opinions of its nature, 
origin, and worth. 

the compass of sects had felt it in turn, and the only principle of pre- 
vention gradually dawned on the common consciousness. In every 
persecuted cause, honestly conducted, there was a throe towards the 
"birth of this great principle.' — Masson, Life of Milton, vol. iii. 



Chap. II. THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 117 



B. What do you say, then, to their war against 
all bodily pleasures, dwarfing and mutilating human 
nature by an inhuman asceticism ? The functions of 
life are of two kinds ; one set of them increasing the 
happiness of the mind, another set increasing the hap- 
piness of the body. If we could suppose a man com- 
pletely perfect, we should take for granted that he 
would unite these two forms of pleasure in the highest 
degree, and would extract, both from body and mind, 
every enjoyment consistent with his own happiness, 
and with the happiness of others. 

A. I say that such a 6 perfect man ' was not Christ ; 
and that, as Christians, these Scottish Presbyterians 
would have scouted, and rightly scouted, such an Ideal 
as Pagan, not Christian ; as the ideal of Apollo, not of 
Christ. 

B. Well, fortunately, science is now dissipating 
those horrible delusions which led to such intolerance, 
asceticism, and bigotry. It is its great function to 
purify theology, by showing that there has been no 
cruelty because there has been no interposition, and that 
the calamities with which the world is afflicted are 
the result of the ignorance of man, and not of the 
interference of God. And we must not, therefore, 
ascribe to Him what is due to our own folly, or to our 
own vice. 

A. But whence, if there is an omniscient Creator, 
came the conditions which necessitate our ignorance, 
and hence our folly and misery ? I fancy that Science, 
now that it has begun to 6 dissipate,' will not stop at 
Deism. However, not to go from the main point, I 



318 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



think that the Scottish Covenanters and those of like 
mind, cannot be truly represented and fairly judged, 
if it is not seen that their intolerance, asceticism, and 
bigotry was the necessary consequence of their Chris- 
tian creed, in men of logical mind, and passionate eleva- 
tion of feeling. Hence, however their creed may be 
denounced as false and pernicious, the men themselves 
are, I think, to be treated with all the honour, and even 
sympathy, that is ever the clue of clear thought, and 
self-sacrificing devotion. For it was the same passion 
of feeling and logic of thought which have given 
Scottish thinkers their place in the history of European 
philosophy, that, making Scottish believers thorough- 
going in their Christian doctrine, gave them their place 
in the history of Christian fanaticism. 

B. But I cannot admit that excesses which it has 
made my very flesh creep to record are thus to be 
excused, or even justified, as the natural fruits of 
Christian beliefs. 

A. Yet just consider, what Christianism, as an 
actual historical fact, is, and has been. It is that 
Creed which teaches that Jesus of Nazareth was 
the son of God, or indeed God himself ; that his 
death on the cross was an atonement for the sins of 
men ; and that he rose from the dead, and is, as 
a living Saviour, seated on the right hand of God. 
But with this central dogma, — the very core as it, in 
fact, is of Christianism — are vitally connected all those 
doctrines which, common as they are even to Eomanists 
and Calvinists, have been historically the cause, and are 
logically the justification of Christian bigotry, asceticism, 



Chap. H. THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 119 

and intolerance. For how could I be otherwise than 
what you may call ' bigoted,' if I do honestly and truly 
believe that the Bible is a supernatural revelation of 
truth by a personal God to his fallen creature Man ? 
And as it is only as a means of salvation from God's 
everlasting wrath and curse, both in this world and in 
that which is to come, that so prodigious an event as 
the crucifixion of the Son of God, very God of very God, 
can be intelligently believed and realised as an actual 
fact ; how — if so, if men are really thus under God's 
everlasting wrath and curse, except they lay hold of his 
great Salvation, — how can one's notions of life but be 
what you would call e ascetic ? ' And if, as that Gospel 
which, with so fine an irony, is called 4 Glad Tidings,' 
positively affirms, he that believeth not — though of 
such are the vast majority of mankind — shall be ever- 
lastingly damned ; if, as Christ himself said, the wicked, 
the unbelievers, shall be cast into outer darkness, where 
shall be weeping and gnashing of teeth ; how can I 
but be 4 intolerant ' of every theory, and of every person 
whose aim, or even tendency, is mimical to belief so 
tremendously important in its consequences? And 
is not every extravagance into which belief in a Divine 
Interfering Personality may run, justified by belief in 
its having already interfered in so stupendous a miracle 
as the Incarnation ? For what argument could be 
more conclusive than that of the Apostle : 6 He that 
spared not his own Son, but freely gave him up to 
the death for us all, how shall he not, with him also, 
freely give us all things ? ' 1 Belief, therefore, in con- 

1 Rom. viii. 32. 



120 



PILGRIM MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



tinned divine interference on behalf of believers, and the 
bigoted, ascetic, and intolerant conduct that may there- 
from proceed, cannot, as I think, be fairly judged, 
except it be regarded, not from without only, but from 
within also, and as witnessing to the reality and fervour 
of that cardinal belief without which it is simply an 
equivocation for a man to call himself a Christian — the 
belief in that Supreme Interference, which, if really cre- 
dited, must make every other whatever credible — the 
birth of God as a Man, and his crucifixion for Men. 
And hence it is, that I think the Covenanters, and 
those of like mind, should not be contemned as a 
mere 6 monkish rabble,' 1 or vilified as ' tyrants and 
torturers,' but rather honoured as noble, though 
pitied as tragically beguiled, souls. But if passion and 
thorough-going logic — while these have been unin- 
structed by the facts of Nature and of History, and 
confined within those Christian theories which have 
latterly shown themselves no less pernicious than false, 
— have led to bigotry and intolerance ; that same 
passion and logic, rightly instructed, will, one may 
hope, if Scotsmen still retain any distinctive national 
character, make it impossible for them to be long- 
stayed in such a halfway-house as English Broad- 
Churchism with its fond sentimentalisms, and foolish 
incoherencies, and will carry them on even to as for- 
ward a place, it may be, in the presently-coming, as in 

1 ' The Baillies, the Binnings, the Dicksons, the Durham s, the 
Heniings, the Frasers, the Gillespies, the Guthries, the Halyburtons, 
the Hendersons, the Rutherfords, and the rest of that monkish rabble/ 
vol. ii. p. 579. See the remarks hereon of Professor Masson, as above 
cited, p. 379. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



121 



that first stage of the Modern Bevolution called the 
Beformation. 

Mr. Buckle courteously admitted that there was 
something in what I had said. I replied that, having 
spoken as one who would probably, in those old days, 
have been himself a Covenanter, I trusted that some 
allowance would be made for any undue warmth in 
my defence of them. And so, with our customary 
cordiality, we parted for the night. 

But it was nearly two hours later before I 
could persuade myself to turn in. For while around 
there was the shadowy Night of the precipice-walled 
pit in which we were encamped, above was the 
splendour of a starry Day. And the material Night 
around, and the material Day above, seemed but 
symbols of the more real world of Thought. The 
ensphering starry splendours of Universal Day, and 
the dark encompassing precipices of Earthly Night, 
seemed prophetically to symbol the conditions of 
Man's intellectual Life, — still, even as hitherto, error- 
encompassed, but with the starry truth that-is-to-be 
ensphered. 

My thoughts recurring to the question which, from 
the night of our first encampment in the Sinai tic Desert, 
had more or less constantly occupied me as the true 
complement of those questions of Causation discussed 
with Mr. Buckle, the question — What is the historical 
origin of the notion of such a supernatural Cause of 
Events, and interfering personal Being, as Christians 
call 6 God ; ' and what inference as to the actual existence 
of such a Being is to be drawn from the facts of the 



122 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



historical origin of the notion ? — my thoughts recurring 
to this question, I seemed here, amid the Alps of Sinai, 
the scene of the first entrance of the Hebrews and 
their god Yahveh on the world-stage, to have tracked 
the notion home to its den. Nor can the question as 
to the origin and validity of this notion be any longer 
treated as a mere frivolity or blasphemy. On the con- 
trary, it is a question which any adequate acquaintance 
with the results of modern research imperatively 
demands that every earnest thinker should resolutely 
put, and not only definitely answer, but answer on 
grounds, either in accordance with the results of modern 
research, or capable of withstanding that combined 
assault of all the sciences which is directed by the New 
Philosophy of History. No doubt when, with a realising 
sympathy, I recalled the fervent faith which those whom 
I had been defending against the one-sided condemna- 
tion of Mr. Buckle had had in the objective reality of an 
interfering personal God, with whom, like the Hebrews 
of old, they made ' National Covenants,' a very tragic 
view of existence could hardly but result from the very 
possibility of an unfrivolous and unblasphemous putting 
of such a question as, whether, after all, such a Being 
exists ? But one cannot fully sympathise with such men, 
if one dares not be oneself, as logical as they. Such is 
the parodox of human life, that, only in antagonism to, 
can there now be genuine brotherhood with, the heroes 
of the Eeformation. And by the example of their 
noble thoroughness, so far as their light went, and 
heroic contempt of all things in comparison with the 
attaining for themselves, and proclaiming to others of 



Chap. II. THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 123 



what they held to be the truth, let us be encouraged 
and directed in carrying out to their consequences the 
results, however destructive, of the new knowledge of 
our new age. 

Now, in answer to the question as to the historical 
origin of that notion of such a supernatural Cause of 
Events, and interfering, personal Being as Christians 
call 6 God,' the main facts to be noted are these. First, 
so far from being an innate idea, it is a notion originally 
distinctive, and wherever else it appears, due to the 
influence, of the Semitic religions of Judaism and 
Islamism ; nor, even with the Semites, is this a primitive 
notion, but one which, as the basis of a national re- 
ligion, is traceable no further back than to the general 
moral revolution of the Sixth Century B.C. ; and in con- 
trast to, and defining this notion as distinctively Semitic, 
we find that those new religions, or religious ideas, 
which originated among the Aryan peoples about the 
Sixth Century B.C., were either atheistic, as Buddhism, 
or — as Classic Monotheism, or Theism — quite opposed 
to attributing to the Deity any such concrete personality, 
and interference in human affairs as the Jews imagined. 
But, you say, let it be granted that the notion of God 
as an interfering personal Being is distinctively a 
Semitic notion, it may still have, with them, a super- 
natural origin, and hence, incontestable authority ? 
In reply to this, it is to be noted that those Mosaic 
Miracles which would be proof of the existence of such a 
Being are incredible now even by Christian ministers, as 
shown by their quibblings about, and shyings at, these 
miracles ; that belief in the supernatural inspiration of 



124 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



those Scriptures which. 4 reveal ' the existence of such a 
Being is impossible to every scholar acquainted with the 
facts as to their dates, editings, and interpolations ; and 
that, in the fact of the correspondence of their concrete 
notion of a personal, interfering God with that want of 
abstractness and relativity of intellectual conception 
which has distinguished the Semites throughout the 
history of both their great families, we find a natural, 
and low natural origin for this notion. Such are the 
two chief sets of facts by which the question is answered 
as to the historical origin of the Judge ^-Christian con- 
ception of God. 

And now, let us but feel present with us here, amid 
the profound stillness, under these dark precipices, and 
up -gazing on that resplendent Day of the Universe above 
us, and around ; let us but feel present with us here one 
of those heroic spirits of whom our late discussion with 
Mr. Buckle has led us to think ; and hardly, if we are 
susceptible of a sympathetic influence from moral contact 
with such men — hardly will it be possible for interested 
sophistries and feminine sentimentalities long to with- 
hold us from boldly and explicitly drawing, like them, 
the clear logical conclusion from what we most certainly 
know, or believe, to be historical facts. That conclusion 
must, I think, be that, — if the Jewish conception of God 
as a supernatural personal Being, a conscious and in- 
telligent Will, outside of, and separate from, yet ever 
interfering with, Nature, can truly claim for itself no 
supernatural origin whatever ; if it can as little claim the 
authority of a universal human c intuition ; ' if its origin is 
not even in a general movement, but only in one section 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



125 



of a general movement of human development ; — then, 
that a Being corresponding to this Jewish and Judaeo- 
Christian notion actually exists, can, so far as the facts 
of its historical origin would lead us to infer — have no 
probability whatever. But if so, all the metaphysical 
arguments for the existence of such a Being are also 
immensely weakened — to any one, at least, capable of 
reflecting on the influence of the association of ideas in 
giving seeming cogency to arguments. 

The next day brought an unexpected adventure, 
which, however, only the more impressed on memory 
the scene and meditations of the night that preceded it. 
Continuing our journey through this Alpine desert, we 
had, immediately after breakfast, to scale the Nukb 
Baderah, or 4 Pass of the Sword's Point.' And on 
coming down, on the opposite side, instead of going 
on through Wady Mukatteb, or the Written Valley, 
we turned up, — why or how, I do not know, for I was 
still amid the thoughts that had kept me so late the 
previous night, — and came suddenly on Eobinson 
Crusoe huts and tents in a little cultivated glen com- 
pletely shut in by the precipitous hills. A tall, stout, 
grey- bearded man, in the ordinary British country 
costume, came forward to welcome us. It was Major 
MacDonald, the 'King of the Desert.' 1 Some of his 

1 £ It is really no exaggeration/ says the Eev. T. St. John Tyrwhitt, 
' to call the Major King of the Desert, so far as being obeyed goes. . . . 
He bought the ibexes and antelopes the Arabs occasionally trapped or 
shot ; he slew leopards and hyenas ; he did them many benefits ; he was 
a hakeem ; he was powerful and handsome to look on ; he had an eye of 
kindness and command ; he had also a big stick ; in short, he seemed to 
have subdued their spirits thoroughly by sheer superiority of moral, 
intellectual, and physical power all together.' — Vacation Tourists, vol. i. 
Sinai, p. 349. 



126 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt II. 



people, it may be remembered, we had met in a lull of 
the sandstorm, during our second day's journey. Many 
years ago, when making a pilgrimage to Sinai, he had 
discovered, and, by his strong right arm, — that is, by the 
influence he had acquired among the Tuwarah Arabs 
— .taken possession of the Sinaitic mines of Turquoises. 1 
Mr. Buckle was known to him by his book. As for 
myself, a Scotsman seldom needs any other introduction 
than his name to a countryman abroad. We are sure 
to know, at least, if not to be, cousins of each other'. 

So the Major led us up to the house he had just 
constructed for himself instead of the tents, which did 
not keep out the sun, and were apt to be swept away by 
the rain. This house had, according to old Highland 
fashion, the side of the hill for its back wall ; one 
small window only, for the house consisted of but a 
single room ; and a roof that was formed of various odd 
planks and pieces of tarpaulin. A Highland hut, but 
a Highland welcome. That we had already break- 
fasted could not be admitted as an excuse for not 
breakfasting again. And prepared by a fillip of whisky, 
we sat down to a second breakfast, of which the Capri- 
corn cutlets were a delicacy that Mr. Buckle, professed 
epicure as he was, never forgot. The rest of the day 
was spent in examining the curious inscriptions in, or 
near, and the ancient fortress overlooking, the Wady 

1 A collection op specimens from these mines, purchased from Major 
MacDonald, is, I believe, to be seen in the Geological Museum in 
Jermyn Street. His treasures were found, as so often, alas! happens, of 
far less value than he anticipated. And the unfortunate Major, as I 
was some years ago greatly grieved to hear, had a melancholy ending to 
his life. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB, 



127 



Magharah. And it chanced that another party was 
descried passing in the neighbourhood of the Major's 
glen. So they were seized and brought in. One of 
them turned out to be a brother Scot, whom we shall 
call Hamilton. At dinner, that evening in the hut, the 
Major presided at one table, and his nephew, the sole 
companion of his solitude, at the other. Capricorn 
soup and Capricorn cutlets again, with the liveliest 
conversation, in which, of course, Mr. Buckle led as 
usual. And after the others had retired, the three 
Scotsmen took out their chairs to the open air under 
the moon and stars, while on the top of an old cask 
there was placed for them a bottle of the dew of their 
native mountains. 

Our conversation w^as prolonged till past midnight. 
For much information had the Major to give on the 
physical characteristics of the peninsula, 1 and many 
reflections arose thereon. His facts led me to conclude 
that the misspent meterological forces, are almost as im- 
portant a source of wealth as the unworked mineral 
veins, of Sinai. Here, as ever, our bride, the Earth, 
has no barren womb, if she gets her due. And it is 
but because the Leda-shower of the rain is suffered to 
escape, that the land is sterile. 2 But in a thriftlessly 
or destructively spent force there is always such an 
appearance of immorality, or, at least, of what 

1 He published one or two letters on the subject in the Athenceum. 
See particularly, No. 1649, p. 747. And generally, as to the fauna of 
Sinai, see Seetzen, Reisen, vol. iii. s. 20 ; and as to its flora, Schubert, 
Reisen, vol. ii. s. 351. 

2 Compare Burckhardt, Travels in Arabia, vol. i. p. 240 : — 1 In Arabia, 
wherever the ground can be irrigated by wells, the sands may soon be 
made productive.' 



128 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IL 



ought not be, as sets one thinking how it might be 
otherwise. And, sitting here that night with the 
Scottish King of Sinai, one could hardly but have a 
vision of the immense and world-benefiting change 
that might be effected in the peninsula had the 
Arab populations of Egypt and Syria what they are 
surely entitled to — the choice of their Governors. For 
then, assuredly, things would be monstrously ill- 
managed were not their vote unanimous for British 
Governors-General instead of Turkish Pashas and 
Khedives. Nor are great political changes in the re- 
lations of the East and West so unconnected with the 
results of those theological discussions now agitating the 
West, as the superficial thinker may fancy. For when 
the Semitic legends of Sinai become utterly incredible, 
there cannot but sooner or later follow a complete 
clearing-away of that atmosphere of superstition which 
has emanated from them, and been in-breathed as a 
life-supporting Ideal. But men cannot live without an 
atmosphere of the Ideal. And that Ideal of Humanity 
which will take the place of the Christian Ideal will 
make, not the individuals only, but the nations also, 
who come under its influence, feel that life has no 
worth except in so far as it has a more or less definite 
function and aim in contributing to the welfare of 
others, and the Oneness of Mankind. Let, however, 
this be felt, and with some degree of noble enthusiasm, 
and those selfish, yet suicidal, considerations which, 
amid the prevailing anarchy of unbelief and sham- 
belief, at present dominate British policy, will lose 
something, at least, of their power, and Britain's civi- 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



129 



Using mission in the East will be fully accepted, what- 
ever responsibilities it may bring. No small effect, 
therefore, will dissipation of belief in these Jew nur- 
sery-tales of 'bread rained from heaven' certainly 
have on the political and economical future of the 
Sinaitic peninsula. A Desert during the long ages of 
superstitious belief in the Biblical legends that have 
here their scene, it will share in the benefits of those 
civilising annexations of which the aim will be the reali- 
sation of that new Ideal which will take the place of that 
which here is dissipated. And, as a province of British 
Syria, we may hope to see Sinai yet a no inconsiderable 
source of the world's wealth, instead of, as hitherto, 
one of the chief sources of its superstition. 

Next morning, or rather that morning, but some 
hours later, we bid adieu to Glen MacDonald, gladly, 
however, accepting the hospitable invitation of its chief 
to pay him another visit, should we find it impossible, as 
seemed not unlikely, to get on to Petra, and be obliged 
to return to Cairo. And so Mr. Buckle and I, deep 
again in argument, journeyed on, through Wady Mu- 
katteb, the famous valley of the Sinaitic Inscriptions. 
It was but slightly, however, that we glanced at them, 
and our indifference seems to have been justified by 
the results of the most recent researches. 1 Not of 

1 The chief established facts with respect to them may be thus 
briefly noted: — (1.) As to their age: They are first mentioned by 
Diodorus, B.C. 10, and are of various dates, from, at least, the second 
century before, to, at least, the sixth century after Christ. (2,) As to 
language : It is 'Aramtean, the Semitic dialect, which, in the earlier 
centuries of our era, held throughout the East the place now occupied by 
the modern Arabic, and the character differs little from the Nabathsean 
alphabet used in the inscriptions of Idumasa and central Syria.' — 



130 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



these rock-scrawlings, in which certain Christian en- 
thusiasts have found the 6 Voice of Israel from the 
Eocks of Sinai,' 1 was onr talk ; but, like Milton's demons, 
— and, indeed, it was hot and desolate enough for 
Pandemonium, — we discoursed of 

Fixed Fate, Freewill, Foreknowledge absolute. 2 

In other words, our general discussion of Causation 
touched to-day more particularly on the ideas of 
Matter and Force, Substance, Moral Kesponsibility, 
Law, Necessity, and Freedom. 

Getting at length, towards noon, into the shade of 
a solitary mimosa-tree, our conversation was on the 
less abstract subject of the difference between the 
Statesman and the Philosopher, and of the union 
of their characteristic qualities that would be required 
for a good treatise on the Law of Divorce. On 
the one hand, there would be needed the unpre- 
judiced truthfulness of view arising from a knowledge 
of physiological facts, and of the historical origin 
of our conventional ideas with respect to the relations 
of the sexes ; and no less necessary, on the other hand, 
would be the practical insight and tact which would 
lead to the suggestion of changes capable of being 
gradually carried-out in a complete reconstruction 
of these fundamental social relations. The subject of 

Palmer, Desert of the Exodus, vol. i. p. 191. (3.) As to meaning'. They 
are the passing inscriptions partly of Christian, but chiefly of Pagan, 
pilgrims, traders, and colonists. 

1 This was the title of the work in which the Rev. C. Forster, in 
1851, revived the theory suggested by Bishop Clayton, in 1753, which 
again was but a revival of that of Cosmas Indicopleustes, who travelled 
in Sinai about 518. 

2 Paradise Lost. 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUP. 



131 



Women is generally an interesting one to men, as, I 
suppose, that of Men is to women ; and so we were 
beguiled into staying too long under the mimosa-tree. 
For before we reached our tents in the oasis of Wady 
Feiran, the termination of our clay's journey, and from 
whence there was but one, or at the most two stages 
to the end of our Sinaitic pilgrimage, the 6 Mount of 
God,' Mr. Buckle, too tired to sit his donkey, had 
dismounted, and could but stagger along, leaning 
heavily on my arm, hardly able to speak, much less 
to converse. And the Sun had long set, and, through 
the palm-tops, revealed the hosts of the stars. 

Up betimes the following morning, while Mr. 
Buckle was recovering from the previous day's over- 
fatigue, I spent some hours exploring this possible 
camping-place 1 of the Israelites, and certain site of the 
early Christian bishopric of Paran. And can the reader, 
who has followed the thoughts indicated in the fore- 
going chapters, not guess what the logic was which 
gave to the words c The Lord came from Sinai . . . 
and the Holy One from Mount Paran ' 2 a profoundly 
tragic meaning ? Amid these ruins of the first enthusi- 
astic centuries of the Christian Faith I was transported 
back into the world of these early centuries, and of my 

1 More probably, however, as I think, to be identified with Alush 
than with Kephidim, where, as is expressly stated, ' there was no water 
for the people to drink.' — See Exodus xvii. 1, and Numbers xxxiii. 12, 
13, 14 ; and compare Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 40, n. 5. 

2 Feiran is certainly an Arabic corruption of Paran ; but the Wilder- 
ness of Paran should seem most probably to be identified with the desert 
of Et-Tih, and Mount Paran with that southernmost portion of the 
tableland now known as Jebel Magrah. — See Palmer, Desert of the 
Exodus, \o\. i. p. 200 ; vol. ii. pp. 509-10 j and Williams, The Negeb, p. 124. 

% 2 



132 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



own early years. The Ideal of the Present is the 
hoped-for Eeality of the Future. And the Seer of 
Patmos in recording his vision of Heaven had said, 
c I saw no Temple therein, for — for the Lord God 
Almighty and the Lamb are the Temple of it; and 
the city had no need of the sun, neither of the moon 
to shine on it ; for the glory of God did lighten it, and 
the Lamb was the light thereof.' Such had been the 
ideal atmosphere of their lives — the saints and hermits 
of these cells — and such also once the ideal atmosphere 
of my own life. But the Lord came but from Sinai, 
and the Holy One but from Mount Paran. It was now, 
not only seen that the actual objective existence of a 
supernatural personal God is but an hypothesis ; an hy- 
pothesis which it is not only not a sin but a duty to in- 
quire into the truth of ; but that it is an hypothesis which 
the results of criticism of the supposed records of this 
Being make in the highest degree doubtful. And 
clearly to see this, while — amid these ancient Christian 
ruins, and the magic light of such a morn as that in 
which Mary Magdalene came to the Sepulchre, and 
found the body of her Lord taken away, — vividly, at 
the same time, realising what the belief in the super- 
natural personal God of the Bible is, and has been, — , 
was certainly an experience of a rather tragic nature. 
For long after the complete transformation of an 
Old Faith ; long after the New is found clear and 
sufficient ; long after the Old is regarded no otherwise 
than as one regards the atmosphere and ideals of 
childhood, certain scenes and circirmstances may fill 
the soul with the echoes, as it were, of an afterclang of 



Chai>. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



133 



sentiment.. And so, wandering about alone, in the fair 
morning light, among the mined cells of hermits, not a 
few doubtless in these days, saintly and heroic men ; 
the visionary world in which they had lived was present 
with me in all its tenderness, and beauty, and subhmity ; 
present with me too, even as a world in which I myself 
had lived in bygone years ; and all the sweet voices 
about me — the murmurs of the brooks and little runnels 
of water among the tender grasses, the sighings of the 
breeze that stirred the palm-tops, and moved the 
blossoming asphodel in the crevices of the rocks — all 
seemed to have but one burden of yearning and of 
love — all these sweet low voices seemed to have but 
these inexpressibly touching words over and over again 
to repeat, yjpav tov Kvpiov /xou, koX ovk ol8a ttov eOrjKav 
avrov — 4 They have taken away my Lord, and I know 
not where they have laid him.' 

But I had not found Egypt favourable to conven- 
tional beliefs ; nor did I now find the Alps of Sinai aught 
but a stimulant to the boldest questioning of them. In 
men's little home-worlds, Mr. Buckle's great argument 
— if such or such a cherished belief of mine were not 
true, I could not stand up, and live — may appear as 
convincing as it is undoubtedly common. But not, if 
one has adequately profited by the lessons to be learned 
from the aspect which Man's history, in those countless 
milleniums of it which make the life of the individual 
but an hour, presents in Egypt ; and from the aspect 
which Nature, in its stern sublimity and voiceless silence, 
presents in the Desert. Weak, cowardly, and utterly 
unworthy of manhood will it then appear to permit 



134 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Past II. 



mere sentiment so to fill one's eyes as to blind one to 
the facts of things ; feminine, in the worst sense, to 
permit oneself to be like the poor hysterical 1 Magda- 
lene, — who so naturally, so very naturally, was suddenly 
made to fancy by a tender tone, or the magic of the 
early dawn, that he to whom she was complaining of 
her loss was he himself, the beloved one, whom she 
had lost, — feminine, in the worst sense, will it then ap- 
pear to permit oneself to be, like her, the mere sport of 
hallucination. And so, as I mounted my dromedary, 
and rode away through the palms and tamarisks to over- 
take the caravan, that, while I had still been wandering 
in the memoried ruins of this oasis, had started on the 
day's journey ; I felt only more strongly than ever the 
necessity of the Ideal for a noble and blessed life ; and 
the necessity, therefore, of mastering those philosophical 
problems, on the solution of which alone it can be 
solidly reconstructed ; or rather, the solution of which 
will be, in its emotional aspect, an Ideal — an Ideal, the 
splendour of Truth, — and adequate to replace, at length, 
the false, and therefore pernicious Ideals of all existing 
popular religions. 

I find, therefore, that our discussion of those ques- 
tions of Causation and Method which usually occupied 
our forenoons, was to-day more prolonged and animated 
than usual. For, with that elasticity which is generally 
characteristic of the nervous temperament, Mr. Buckle 
had completely recovered from the fatigue of the previ- 
ous day. And our discussion began with his giving a sort 
of summary of his historical principles, and their support- 

1 1 Possessed of seyen devils.' 



Chap. II. 



THE ALPS OF THE TUB. 



135 



ing arguments, as they are more particularly set-forth iu 
his second and fourth chapters. From discussing that 
application of Political Economy to History which he 
rightly, I think, considered (in having at least drawn 
greater attention to it) one of his chief contributions to 
historical Science ; we passed to the consideration of the 
place of Political Economy in a Classification of the 
Sciences. He thought it should be regarded as the 
uniting science, or bridge, between the Sciences of 
Nature and those of Mind. I doubted, however, 
whether the Sciences could be rightly arranged at all 
in a purely sequential order. But then came up the 
connected subjects of the Theory of Probabilities, the 
Method of Averages, and Statistics, through which we 
are enabled to verify the laws to which we are led by 
the application of the science of Political Economy to 
History. Then came Mr. Buckle's distinction between 
the laws of the Mass and the laws of the Individual ; 
and so, again, the question as to the logic of eliminating 
Moral Forces in the consideration of the history of 
Masses, while admitting their importance in the con- 
sideration of the history of Individuals. And thence 
we came to the fundamental question as to the true 
conception of Causation — whether it should be con- 
ceived only as a Sequence, or, as I maintained, also as 
a Eeciprocal Action. And if not merely as a Sequence, 
then, our Classification of the Sciences will not be in a 
purely sequential order. For the Order of the 
Sciences is, or ought to be, but the external form, as it 
were, of our principles of Method ; and evidently the 
principles of our Method must be in the closest con- 



136 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



nection with our general theory of Causation ; and, if 
the true conception of Causation is that of Eeciprocal 
Action, then, — as the Law of the development of a 
conception so fundamental will be the Ultimate Law of 
History, — with this Law also must our Classification of 
the Sciences be closely connected. Such is an outline 
of this day's discussion. And as we journeyed on, 
often we looked back — though without permitting our 
admiration to interrupt our argument, — often we looked 
back on the five grandly precipitous peaks of Serbal, 
towering over the Paradise of the Bedawin, and the 
Euins of Paran. 



137 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE MOUNT OF GOD. 

Next day, Mr. Buckle, for the first and only time in 
the Desert, found himself perfectly unable to talk. So, 
as I rode on meditating alone — and more particu- 
larly on the meaning and aim of Progress — suddenly, 
about half-past four o'clock in the afternoon, turning 
out of Wady-es-Sheykh, we found ourselves in the 
great plain at the foot of the Mount of God. And 
looking down a narrow glen along the range termi- 
nated by the precipices of the Mount, the vista was 
closed by fruit-trees and cypresses, surrounding lofty 
and irregular walls, and we knew it to be the Convent 
of Mount Sinai, itself surrounding the sacred church 
of the Transfiguration, built by the Emperor Justinian, 
nearly one thousand three hundred and fifty years ago. 

A walk of twenty minutes down the glen brought us 
under the Convent walls. Prom a loophole, some thirty 
feet overhead, a rope was let down, and our letter of 
introduction taken up. While waiting till all the in- 
ternal formalities were gone through that precede the 
admission of strangers, our conversation was naturally 
on the inmates of the place. And it need hardly be 
said that Mr. Buckle's expressions of feeling and opinion 
were neither flattering to the holy fathers, nor gene- 



138 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt II. 



rally appreciative of saintliness. But, though agreeing 
with him so far, I was still most desirous of sympa- 
thetically realising those wonderful activities of thought 
and feeling of which the outcome had been the histo- 
rical marvels of that Faith, of which Sinai stands scarcely 
second to Calvary as a Holy Place. In order, therefore, 
to get thoroughly into the atmosphere of its visionary 
world, I proposed that we should take up our abode in 
the Convent during our stay at Sinai. And, on our 
admission into its intricate maze of courts and build- 
ings of all ages, from Justinian to Napoleon, we were 
shown, on an upper terrace, sufficiently commodious 
guest-chambers. The Convent air, however, was alto- 
gether oppressive to Mr. Buckle ; and I readily gave 
way to his strong desire that we should rather abide in 
our tents at the opening of the glen from the great plain 
of Eahah (Best). So, towards sunset, we walked back 
to our encampment. And viewing the great mountain- 
fenced table-land ; seeing the peak of Sufsafeh tower- 
ing some fifteen hundred feet above the plain, and so 
sheer in its precipitous height that you can literally 
6 touch the mount ; ' and, shortly after, blinded by the 
lightnings, and deafened by the peals of a Giving- 
of-the-Law thunderstorm, — it was with something of 
the interest of surprise that we remarked to each other 
how well the requirements of the tradition appeared to 
be satisfied by the physical characteristics of Mount 
Sinai. 

Of course, some other place may yet be found with 
even more evidences in its favour as the original seat 
of the promulgation of the Mosaic Law ; or the legend 



Chap. III. 



THE MOUNT OF GOD. 



139 



may possibly not contain even so much truth in it, as 
would be implied in the fact of a general promulgation 
of Laws from one certain Mount of Lawgiving. But 
even if it were admitted that, in the plain Er-Eahah 
the Mosaic Law was certainly promulgated ; and ad- 
mitted that such facts as those given us by Major 
MacDonald with reference to the rainfall, and the crops 
that may be raised by preventing it from running to 
waste, make it quite possible that a very considerable 
number of Israelites may have lived for forty years 
in the Wilderness ; surely it is manifest that we should 
not have one whit more evidence than now of the 
Lord's having come down on Sinai, and Himself in. 
person revealed to Moses, either the first or the second 
set of the Commandments. Or if we should find evi- 
dence to believe that the Greeks were actually ten 
years before Troy, should we in such evidence find 
evidence also of the truth of those traditions of the 
personal interferences of the Gods in the Siege which 
we find worked into the Hellenic Pentateuch — the 
Iliad ? 

I woke earlier than usual next morning, — soon after 
five o'clock indeed. Partly, no doubt, this was owing 
to the unwonted cold of our elevation of 5,500 feet above 
the sea, but partly also to the activity of thought 
which Sinai had excited. But I remained the whole 
day, till dinner, in the evening, in my tent alone ; 
going but occasionally out to look on the infinitely 
suggestive scene around ; or with the more practical 
purpose of getting the tent-pegs, which the high wind 
was constantly loosening, refixt. And indeed, though 



140 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet II. 



we were encamped under the precipices of Sinai for 
nearly a week, I was most of the time alone, and had 
little or no discussion here with Mr. Buckle. It was 
not, however, from finding myself on the probable scene 
of, at least, some considerable event of the history of 
the Israelites at so remote a period as the fourteenth 
century B.C., that I could not stir from my tent during 
the whole of my first day under the Mount of God. 
Nor was it even from being certainly on the spot which 
has, for centuries, been, at least, believed to have been 
the scene of 4 God's first great revelation to Man,' that 
I stirred not all clay from the encampment. But it was 
because of seeing beyond tolerance of companionship, 
or even, at first, of change of place, the falsehood of 
this belief with respect to Sinai, and the consequences 
of this falsehood, — the tragedy of discovered illusion ; 
the spectacle of Evil, stripped of all theologic veils, and 
confronting in its naked horrors an uninterfering per- 
sonal God ; and the judgment of enlarged sympathy 
on this last form of a fiction of undeveloped intellect. 

At the Mount of God, the question of Miracle is 
seen in its innermost core. Through the j anglings 
about texts, and subtleties about that meant by them, 
one passes, not without something perhaps of the 
rudeness of contempt, to the essential question : Is that 
testified-to by miracle, itself miraculous ? For if a 
Law, or a Faith testified-to by presumed Miracles, have 
nothing in its own nature miraculous ; have, the former, 
nothing in its commandments, the latter, nothing in its 
doctrines, different, not only in form, but in kind, from 
other systems of Law and of Faith ; then, the inci- 



Chap. III. 



THE MOUNT OF GOD. 



141 



dental miracles must certainly be set clown to that 
' primitive culture ' which we know to be universally 
characterized by miraculous narratives. And so, on 
the other hand, the miracles incidental to the revela- 
tion of a Law or a Faith cannot be considered as fully 
disproved, till the unmiraculous character has been 
shown of this Law or Faith itself. The argument, 
therefore, that has occupied us since our reflections at 
the Wells of Moses, with respect to the miracles of the 
Dividing of the Sea, the Sweetening of the Waters, 
and the rest, is not yet concluded. For it is logically 
possible that w r e may still find that the Eevelation, of 
which they are the preliminary incidents, is of such a 
nature as to enforce our assent not only to its own 
miraculous character, but, counterbalancing with its 
own sole weight all the arguments we have yet put 
into the scales, to enforce our assent also to the truth 
of the narrative of the incidental miracles. Going, 
then, boldly up, at length, to the inmost, the primary 
miracle ; contemptuously up through the thunder and 
lightning, the darkness, the voices of trumpets, and 
such other coups de theatre, as one never finds practised 
on civilised men ; we demand whether the so-called 
Eevelation of Sinai is, in itself, miraculous ; whether, 
— be critics right or wrong in their conclusions as to 
the dates of its ordinances, — there is anything in it 
different in kind from what is to be found in other 
Laws and Eeligions ; whether, in a word, the assump- 
tion that it stands on supernatural ground is not a false 
pretence ? The question is enough. This miraculous 
Eevelation, this Eefuge of the whole Christian World, 



142 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



where was thought to be preserved the authoritative 
standard of Morality, bides not the shock of assault, 
but vanishes into the boastful air. 

Consider it : turn to ' Exodus.' What was revealed 
at Horeb? What were the words that God spake 
when he came down in the sight of all the people on 
Mount Sinai ? Was there anything new in what God 
is said to have said, anything specially divine, anything 
essentially different from what Man has been found 
quite capable of saying of himself? The things which 
God is said to have, at Horeb, supernaturally revealed 
are, first, the name of God, and the unity of the God- 
head ; secondly, that one should not steal, or kill, or 
commit adultery, &c, ; thirdly, a great number of 
ritual or social forms and observances ; fourthly, that 
according to their obedience or disobedience, the 
Israelites would be rewarded or punished, not in a 
future, but in this life, — in other words, that the sanc- 
tion of the Moral Law is Temporal Eetribution ; and 
fifthly, glimpses are given of God of a rather savage, 
not to say grotesque character — as, for instance, 4 Let 
not the priests and the people break through to come 
up unto Yahveh, lest he break forth upon them. 1 . . . 
Let me alone, that my wrath may wax hot against 
them, and that I may consume them.' 2 Now, will the 
defenders of Orthodoxy venture to affirm in the face 
of all our certain knowledge to the contrary, that, first, 
there is anything peculiar, and without the aid of 
supernatural revelation, unknowable and unknown, 
either in the name of the Jewish Gocl, or in the 

1 Exodus xix. 24. 2 Ibid, xxxii. 10. 



Chap. HI. THE MOUNT OF GOD. 143 

doctrine of the unity of the Godhead ? Will they 
affirm that, secondly, the Laws of the first set of 
Tables, which were thrown down and broken, were 
such as, in their prohibitions of murder, theft, adul- 
tery, &c, had never occurred to uninspired legislators? 
Will they affirm, thirdly, that the mere ritualistic regu- 
lations contained in the second set of Ten Command- 
ments which, and not the first set, it must be remem- 
bered, were ' the words after the tenor of which God 
made a covenant with Moses and with Israel,' are 
without parallel among the superstitious observances 
of other peoples, and not, indeed, in many incontest- 
able particulars, borrowed from the Egyptians ? Will 
they affirm, fourthly, that there is anything specially 
divine in ignoring the doctrine of Immortality, and in 
making temporal retribution the sanction of the Moral 
Law? 1 Or finally, will they affirm, fifthly, that the 
character of the God revealed to us at Horeb is not a 
wonderfully human mixture of the sublime and the — 
not sublime ? But if these things can not be affirmed, 
then, be the consequences what they may, there is no 
proof of the miraculous, the supernatural, the authori- 
tative character of the Law and Eeligion of Moses. 

1 On this very ground, indeed, Bishop Warburton affirmed the 1 Divine 
Legation of Moses.' But no one, in the least exercised in the logic of 
Science, will be touched by the Bishop's argument. (See Divine Legation, 
book vi. sect. 6.) He deduces the necessity of an Extraordinary Provi- 
dence to support a society unterrified or unlured by a Future State ; and 
the Extraordinary Providence thus obtained he vouches in warranty of 
the Divine Legation. But he has omitted that quite indispensable part 
of scientific deduction — verification. His major premiss being thus un- 
verified, his syllogism is not of a feather's weight to the man of science ; 
and the Extraordinary Providence and the Divine Legation are as 
unproved as ever. 



144 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet n. 



If it is found that, when one examines either the first 
or the second set of Tables themselves with that great 
instrument of modern scientific research, the Compara- 
tive Method, there is nothing miraculous in the Mosaic 
laws and regulations ; then, by all acquainted with this 
fact, further discussion of such incidental miracles as 
those of the Eed Sea, of the Pillar of Cloud, of the 
Eock in Horeb, and the rest, is mere imbecility ; honest 
belief in them, incredible childishness ; aught but utter 
denial, base hypocrisy. And if those Churchmen who 
have the reputation of such learning as to make it im- 
possible to believe that they can, without disingenuous 
equivocation, affirm the supernatural character of the 
legislation attached to the name of Moses, still talk of 
Sinai as the 6 scene of God's first great revelation to 
Man ; ' the great mass of thinking men will more and 
more scout such theologians as, though of a lucrative 
godliness, sophistical, dishonest, and time-serving. For 
it is only the few of nobler strain, or gentler breeding, 
who can make due allowance for that force of habit, 
and those subtleties of thought, which, if they warp 
the judgment, preserve the honour. 

The following day, after lunch I went up alone to 
the Convent, and stayed some considerable time in its 
Church. For its date carries one back to that most 
remarkable Sixth Century after Christ which witnessed 
the codification of Eoman Law under Justinian, and 
the systematisation of Christian Doctrine and Eitual 
under Gregory ; the birth of Mohammed ; and those 
struggles of the Celtic and Teutonic barbarians in which 
originated the modern European nationalities, and those 
traditions which form, as I have shown, the historical 



Chap. III. 



THE MOUNT OF GOD. 



145 



element in that fairest web of Mediaeval Literature — the 
Arthurian Komance-cycle. In a church of the Sixth 
Century, then, what food for thought ! And here espe- 
cially, — where, looking up to the vaulted roof of the 
chancel, and the wall over the apse, we see the first 
imperial representations of Christian mythology. Look- 
ing upon these Sixth-Century mosaics of a fiction so 
extravagant as the Transfiguration, or, as the Greeks call 
it, Metamorphosis, of the prophet of Nazareth ; and, 
above the portraits of the Emperor Justinian, and his 
wife Theodora, Moses before the Burning Bush, and 
receiving; the Tables of the Law — what food for 
thought ! From the date of this church and its 
adornments, we look back on those five hundred years 
which the stories of the Galilean Fishermen had taken 
to get worked into such important doctrines that an 
Emperor now builds a church to commemorate a 
Transfiguration which no educated Greek or Eoman of 
the time it is reported to have occurred would have 
listened to, with aught but a smile of contempt. And 
from the date of this church, and these mosaics, we 
look forward through all those thousand years of the 
Christian Middle-Age of European history from the 
Sixth to the Sixteenth Century; and in the relics 
shown, 1 the holy places pointed out, 2 and the stories 3 

1 The skull, for instance, and hand, now set in gold and jewels, of St. 
Catherine. 

2 The very spot, for instance, where the Burning Bush stood, now 
covered with silver, and with a chapel, adorned with rich carpets, 
erected over it. 

3 Of the miraculous transportation, for instance, of the body of St. 
Catherine from Alexandria to the top of the neighbouring mountain 
which bears her name. 

L 



146 



RIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



told by the monks our companions, we realise in some 
degree the darkness of that intellectual night during 
which Christianity reigned supreme, until at length 
there came, in the fourteenth century, the dawn, at 
least, of the New Day of revolt and reconstruction. 
And as from the sixth to the sixteenth century, so from 
the sixteenth even to the present, their praying, singing, 
and incense-burning, their holy raptures, and ascetic 
self-mortifications, have gone continuously on. And 
all founded on pure delusion ! For if the Sinaitic 
legend of God's Lawgiving is not true, — and not true 
we have clearly found it — then, in the narratives and 
doctrines of the Pentateuch, and Old Testament gene- 
rally, we have no supernatural standard of Faith and 
Morality, in a word, no Bible. No Bible of the Old 
Testament ! What then becomes of the Bible of the 
New Testament, indissolubly bound up with the Old ? 
No Bible either of the Old or of the New Testament ! 
To how many millions will there not, in the recogni- 
tion of such a fact, be the terrible tragedy of discovered 
superstition ? No Bible ! Is there not a Bevolution of 
the widest scope in the acceptance of it as a fact that 
there is no Bible ? No Bible ! Where, then, is there 
to be found a Sanction for Morality ? No Bible ! 
Where, then, is there authority for belief in a memorial 
Personal Immortality ? No Bible ! Where, then, is 
there proof of an interfering Personal God ? No Bible ! 
Is there not a New World, of a kind far more sublime 
than ever a Columbus, or even a Herschel discovered, 
in the achievement of the Quest of a New Eevelation 
— a New Sanction for Morality, a New Ideal for Faith ? 



Chap. III. 



THE MOUNT OF GOD. 



147 



Soon after nine o'clock on the following morning* 
I again set out alone up the glen to the Convent, again 
went into the Church, and then into the Garden, and 
down into the Charnel-house in the midst of it. The 
greater part of the vast quantity of bones is arranged 
arm to arm, thigh to thigh, and rib to rib in a com- 
pact pile, and the skulls are heaped-up together. But 
in a corner of one chamber is a skeleton with some 
few rags of a hair-shirt still clinging to the bones — 
the skeleton of a hermit in the attitude of agonising 
supplication in which the poor wretch died. Stand- 
ing before it, one felt something of the awftilness of 
that age-long tragedy of the Human Soul which, — the 
Lawgiving of Sinai being but a fable, and Christianity, 
therefore, the baseless fabric of a vision, — the agonies 
and the tears, the ecstasies and the songs of these ages 
of belief in it, present. 

Going directly up the hill from the Convent, I 
ascended Jebel Musa, chiefly by a long flight of rude 
steps, winding through the granite rocks, and under 
one or two built archways. Long I remained on the 
summit, which, 7,500 feet above the Sea, bears side by 
side, a Mohammedan Mosque and a Christian Church. 
For very suggestive was their juxtaposition. Fitly, they 
are side by side. For in both the same Semitic God 
is worshipped. But true is the feeling that there is an 
infinite distance between them, close as they stand. 
For in the Christian Church the Semitic God is wor- 
shipped only on the supposition of the truth of such 
an Incarnation for the sake of Man's redemption, as 
has alone, for the Aryan race, with its higher concep- 

L 2 



148 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt IL 



tions of Justice, made possible belief in a personal 
God. 

Descending the peak to the great cypress-trees 
again, I came to the cleft in the rock from which 
Moses is said to have actually seen the very person 
of God. Voltairian ridicule, however, of God's — 
according to orthodox dogma, the Holy Trinity's 
— exhibition of his or their c back parts,' while his 
or their hand covered Moses, lest his or their face 
should be seen, 1 is now scarcely less offensive to the 
scientific student than to the simplest believer. Such 
sorry jests no scholar would care to give utterance to 
with respect to the Zeus of the Iliad ; and why, then, 
with regard to the Yah of the Pentateuch ? But is 
the meaning clearly understood of this later courtesy? 
Is not blasphemy but a melancholy evidence of a rem- 
nant of belief? Who would trouble himself to blas- 
pheme what he assuredly knows has no objective 
reality ? ' The devils who believe and tremble,' or 
who but recently have believed and trembled, is it not 
but they who blaspheme ? 

I can well imagine that men should be tempted to 
herd with others in sightseeing and exploration in order 
to shut out from themselves thoughts so true, denials 
so destructive, and visions of Existence so terrible as 
those which must, in these days, perforce present them- 
selves to every one, save the dullard or the coward, 
who permits himself to be alone amid the stern sub- 
limities of Sinai. But little kinship will one have with 
the heroic, though tragically beguiled, spirits that have 

1 Exodus xxxiii. 20-23. 



Chap. III. 



THE MOUNT OF GOD. 



149 



sorrowed and have sung in the cells and hermitages of 
the Mount of God, if he yield to the temptation. 
Bough and rugged, then, as is the path, through one 
rock-enclosed basin after another; come with me, 
reader, from the peak of Moses to the Willows, which, 
at the foot of the other peak, give its present Arabic name, 
Sufsafeh, to the summit which seems best identified 
with Sinai ; and then climb with me its precipitous 
sides till we stand on the very top of its granite 
dome, or minaret rather, so narrow it is, and smoothly 
sloping. 1 

It is the northern summit of a long, steep, rocky 
ridge, of which the southern and higher peak is the 
traditionally sacred mountain of Moses, or Jebel Musa 
On the eastern hillside, under that summit, though 
unseen from where we are, stands the Fortress-convent 
of Justinian. On our right, opposite the Convent, and 
forming, with the mountain we are standing on, a 
narrow glen, is the correspondingly long ridge of 
Jebel-ed-Deir with its Cross. Westward, on our left, 
is the lofty summit of Mount St. Catherine. Eight in 
front of us, is Jebel Sona or Sena, the corner of the 
triangular range of Jebel-el-Fureia. Beyond, are the 
towering peaks of Serbal. Below is the great plain, 
formed by the meeting of Wady-er-Eahah, and Wady- 
es-Sheykh, the glens on either side of the range Fureia. 
Far and wide are rocky raDges and peaks, from the 

1 Yet this ascent is by no means either so difficult or so perilous as 
one might imagine from what Miss Martineau says. ' One only of our 
party ventured up the small remaining distance, and he went without 
shoes and supported by two Arabs. — (Eastern Life, p. 368.) I kept on 
my shoes and had no support. 



150 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paes II. 



higher of which one may see, right and left, those two 
branches of the Eed Sea, itself a branch of the Indian 
Ocean, the Gulfs of Akaba and of Suez, which form the 
peninsula of Sinai ; and northward, along the base of 
the peninsula, the sandy strip of Debbet-er-Eamleh, 
which separates the sandstone and granite desert of the 
Tur, where we now are, from the limestone desert of 
the Tih. And except when it is broken by such 
storms as made the barbarian tribes of the Beni-Israel 
imagine Yahveh himself to be coming down on 
Mount Sinai, — the mountain-peaks scarce bearing the 
lightnings, the precipices echoing and re-echoing the 
thunder-peals, the glens scarce holding the tempest of 
withstood winds, and counter-rushing torrents, — all is 
in the midst of a dread silence. 1 Let us stay for a 
little here. There is more to be learned than the mere 
geography of Sinai. 

Amid these stern sublimities, this awful silence, the 
cowardice which is the chief cause of the sophistries 
with which men blind themselves to the consequences 
of their new Knowledge in relation to their old Faith 
is no more possible. One is brought to bay ; one dare 
not here lie any more. And tears, one knows, will fall 
on adamant, and outcry get for answer but a mocking 
echo. Dare, then, to admit to your own soul, at least, 
that 6 scene of the first great revelation of God to Man,' 

1 ' The absence of verdure, it need hardly be said, is due to the ab- 
sence of water, of those perennial streams which are at once the creation 
and the life of every other mountain district. And it is this, probably, 
combined with the peculiarity of the atmosphere, that produces the deep 
stillness, and consequent reverberation of the human voice, which can 
never be omitted in any enumeration of the characteristics of Mount 
Sinai.' — Stanley's Sinai and Palestine, p. 13. 



Chap. III. 



THE MOUNT OF GOD. 



151 



and such like phrases, are mere conventional talk ; that 
you do not really believe that a heavenly trumpet 
actually sounded ; 1 that God came down in a visible 
form on Mount Sinai ; 2 that precisely seventy-four 
persons 6 saw God, and did eat and drink ;' 3 and that 
the original ■ Tables ' of the Jewish Law were the 
w r ork of God, and the writing was the writing of 
God, graven upon the Tables. 4 Dare to confess that, 
on the contrary, your real belief is that the Jewish 
story of the origin of their laws has no more truth in 
it than the similar legends of other primitive peoples. 
Dare, — brushing aside the dulness or the sophistry that 
would fain hide the logical connection of all the parts 
of the Christian scheme from the Creation, Temptation 
and Fall of Man, to the Lawgiving of Sinai, and thence 
to the Birth, Death, and Eesurrection of God, — dare to 
follow out the discovery of the falsehood of the Sinaitic 
legend to its consequences. Dare, turning from the 
fictions that give to Sinai its conventional terrors, 
attempt, at least, to realise the truth of the agonies of 
passion, of longing, and of love that so many of the 
tens of thousands of human spirits, your brethren, have 
suffered who, as anchorites, have built themselves cells 
in Sinai, or, as monks, once moved some sets of the 
bones in the Convent charnel-house. Dare to face the 
true terrors of Sinai — the dream-falsehood of the beliefs 
concerning it ; the utter visionariness, therefore, of the 
Christian Faith, that ' Saints' Tragedy ' indeed ; the 
age-long mockery of the hopes and fears of the Super- 



1 Exodus xix. 16. 
3 Ibid. xxiv. 9-11. 



2 Ibid, xxxiii. 22, 23. 
4 Ibid, xxxii. 10. 



152 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



natural with which men have here, nor here alone, 
scourged or solaced themselves ; the mere nightmare of 
demon-peopled Lakes of Fire ; the bitter cheat of those 
fair Heavens which have lured so many a childlike 
heart to martyrdom, and given for life, but dust. 

The external World calls out of the internal, co- 
existing Spirit that which is therein ; and Nature is the 
interpreter of the Soul to itself. Behold, then, even 
visible before you, the silent, because unutterable desola- 
tion of a dream-naked world ; Alps of human Passion, of 
infinite Longing, and of unappeasable Love, insatiate in 
self-sacrifice ; and these living Alps, blasted by light- 
nings, stripped by thunder-torrents, left naked of the 
dreams with which they had clothed themselves. And 
let your soul be penetrated with a purifying terror and 
pity more worthy of manhood, more worthy of Greek 
culture, more worthy of scientific knowledge, than 
barbaric Hebrew superstitions, or base got-up cant 
about them. 

But terrible as is the desolation, not material, which 
here becomes visible in the c unclothed Alps ' 1 of Sinai ; 
tragic as is the sight of the dream-texture of the 
gorgeous robes with which the Human Spirit, like a 
naked madman, has, for these ages, believed itself 
clothed ; terrible as is this tragedy of discovered super- 
stition, there rises dimly before us another, and even 
still more dread, though equally unevadable, conse- 
quence of the falsehood of the legend of God's descent 
on this granite peak, and giving of the law. Eeflecting 
on this scene of terror and of pity, if we see the intel- 

1 Henniker, Notes during a Visit to Egypt, &c, p. 214. 



I 



Chap. III. THE MOUNT OF GOD. 153 

lectual falsehood of the Christian scheme, we discern 
also its moral cause, and profound reasonableness. It 
is the spell that keeps down that dread spectre of Evil 
which, in the higher stages, at least, of moral progress, 
must ever arise when God is conceived as a Person out- 
side of the System of Things, conceived as his Creation. 
At first, indeed, the existence of Evil under the rule of 
an almighty creative Will by no means disturbed the 
Hebrew consciousness. On the contrary, both evil and 
good were ascribed indifferently to the direct action of 
the Lord. 1 But gradually, in accordance with that 
great law of progressive differentiation which Mr. 
Spencer has so admirably worked- out in his general 
theory of Evolution, the evil and the good principles 
were separated, and the former made a person of under 
the name of Satan, or the Adversary. 2 From this 
period onwards, we find that the problem of Evil 
weighs heavily on the consciences even of Hebrew 
psalmists, prophets, and seers. And when, at last, in 
that immense moral revolution with which the Prophet of 
Nazareth will be forever associated, the One God, and 
Almighty personal Will was conceived as a Father ; 

1 And so, for instance, it is the Lord that ' hardens the heart of Pha- 
raoh ' ; his ' Spirit ' that comes on Samson and makes him rise and slay- 
forty men to pay a wager, and even Isaiah makes Yahveh say, both of 
evil things and good, ' Do not I, the Lord, do all these things ? ' 

2 At a period shown by M. Reville (Histoire dtt Diable) to have been 
between the dates of the Second Book of Samuel and the First Book of 
Chronicles. For, in the former work, we are told (ch. xxiv. 1) that the 
anger of the Lord was kindled against Israel, and he moved David 
against them to say, 1 Go, number Israel and Judah/ after which the 
Lord punishes the people for David's action. In the latter work (xxi. 1) 
it is Satan, we are told, who 1 stood up against Israel, and provoked 
David to number the people.' 



154 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part II. 



how could this conception of God possibly have spread 
and maintained itself, among Indo-European races, the 
inheritors of Greek Culture, and Eoman Jurisprudence, 
save through such a theory of the interference of God 
against Evil as that presented by Christianity ? The 
profoundest moral cause, therefore, of that intellectual 
activity which elaborated the Christian theory of Man's 
Fall, and God's Salvation, was the need of reconciling 
the experienced fact of Evil with the believed existence 
of an Almighty Creator, Father, and God of Love. 
And hence, — seeing that the considerations which, on 
one miraculous site after another, have occupied us 
since our landing from Egypt, have shown all the funda- 
mental bases of belief in the interference of God to be 
mere incredible legends ; and seeing, as we now do, 
that, though Theism without Christianity may, in such 
Creeds as those of Judaism and of Islam, be possible 
for Semites, the whole history of the elaboration of 
Christian dogma, when we penetrate to its profoundest 
cause, should seem to proclaim the impossibility — ex- 
cept, of course, exceptionally — the impossibility to the 
Aryan creators of Science, of Art, and of Law in all 
their higher developments, the impossibility of belief 
in an uninterfering personal God — we now finally ask, 
Is the existence of such a Being indeed credible ? 

As we put the question, behold a dread Spectre 
gradually rising from the shadowy plain beneath us, 
till suddenly it towers as high as the Mount of God 
itself, and the last rays of sunset illumine with a fiery 
glow the horror of its naked visage. For a moment 
we take in our hands the veiling fictions of optimism. 



Chap. III. THE MOUNT OF GOD. 155 



But no ! We dare rather behold the dread Spectre in 
its nakedness than cast upon it transparent lies which 
would produce but an intolerable sneer. And Evil un- 
veiled confronts the uninterfering personal God, who' 
overshadows us now on Horeb. About its feet in the 
great plain, and thronging in from every glen of Sinai, 
are innumerable Chorusses of Blasphemy. Their voices 
are like to, but far more terrible than the winds, the 
lightnings, and the thunders of the Descent of God. 
For this is the Insurrection of Man. Windlike shrieks 
and wailings of ghostly hermits, saints, and martyrs who 
have found the Heaven that lured them from Earth 
but mockery ; the future joy for which they abandoned 
present delight, a bitter cheat ; the heavenly love for 
which they endured the crucifixion of earthly love, but 
dust. Fierce lightnings of the Prometheus-song of the 
Poets and Prophets of Justice ; the wrath, scorn, and 
defiance of Titanic revolt ; cries, ringing with the sub- 
lime accents of the willing self-sacrifice of that divine 
Love which takes on itself the suffering of others, in 
order to assure for others the downfall of throned 
Injustice. Continuous thunders of nations of Outcasts, 
Felons, and Unfortunates, wretches born or fated to 
misery, struggling for existence with famine and disease, 
and when successful, victorious only through infamy ; 
of some the voices, loud in echoed laughter-peals of 
blasphemy ; the greater part, numbers without number, 
lifting the sad hoarse voices of soulless slaves, with a 
pathetic patience, nay, with some still even thankful- 
ness, — more intolerable, surely, in its bitter though un- 
conscious irony of blasphemy, — more intolerable, surely, 



TIL GRIM-31EM0RIES. 



Part II. 



than aught else, to their Creator, — lifting the sad, hoarse 
voices of soulless slaves but in one tremendous ever- 
repeated burden, like, — save in the rolling depth of its 
thunders, — to that with which the gladiators of the 
amphitheatre greeted, ere they died, the divinity of a 
Ceesar, 6 Morituri te salutant.' Facing for a moment 
■the fixed accusing gaze of Evil, the terrific horror of 
its naked visage, and the millioned wailings, light- 
nings, and thunders of unappalled, just, and appalling 
blasphemy, the overshadowing Almighty Creator-God 
shrinks suddenly to a poor Phantasm, moving only to 
pity for the men who have believed in the blasphemy- 
worth reality of an unsubstantial dream ; nor, in their 
blind ignorance, seen, as yet, their dread Creator's 
creaturehood. 

Time had passed quickly on the granite peak of 
Sinai. Before I was aware it had fallen dark. So I 
turned now to descend as best I could. But the scramble 
was not without difficulty. Yet there was this satis- 
faction, that I had seen what was worth some danger 
even. And I thought, as I groped my way, that it 
may sometimes take a lifetime to put an hour or two 
in words. At length I reached the head of the ravine 
called after the father-in-law of Moses ; and then I was 
sure that I was, at least, in the most direct line to the 
foot of the mountain. But there was no discoverable 
path in this lonely corrie, and steep, rocky, and 
shrouded in the night, it seemed interminable. I now 
also became aware of great bodily as well as mental 
fatigue ; and I had long exhausted the little store of 
provisions taken with me in the morning. But persist- 



Chap. III. 



THE MOUNT OF GOD. 



157 



ently on I stumbled down the ravine. And at last I was 
assured by suddenly coming in contact with the ropes of 
an outlying tent, that I had reached the encampment. 

As usual, before going to bed, I went out for a 
little under the stars, now shining clear of thunder- 
clouds, and beholding in its starry glory the vast 
Universe of Worlds — not lamps swung from the 
floor of Heaven as to childish Hebrew fancy, but, as 
Aryan science has discovered, suns beyond suns in 
systems within systems, informed throughout with in- 
dwelling forces of order and of life, — wonderful — in the 
elevation produced by thus realising a present Infinite, 
a present Eternity — wonderful seemed the dominancy 
still of a belief at once so puerile and immoral as that 
in a Personal Being outside of this infinite sphere, yet 
cognisant of our little human affairs, and either active 
in them as no magnanimous man would, or passive with 
regard to them as no powerful human -hearted being 
could, be. And dim and obscure as might be, as yet, 
the New Ideal that should give guidance, joy, and 
beauty to life ; the New Ideal that should accord with 
the highest results of Science, the most general concep- 
tions of Law ; the New Ideal that should be but the 
splendour of Truth ; not dim or obscure, as I looked 
upon the sphering Heavens, could be the assurance 
that, so long as the garish Day of Earth should be 
succeeded by the starry Day of the Universe, Eeligion 
would endure ; yea, and Man would know Existence to 
be only the more sublime, for such an utter vanishing 
of Hebrew superstitions, as we have witnessed at the 
Mount of God. 



PAET III. 
IDUM^A. 



161 



CHAPTER L 

TO AKABA BY HAZEROTH. 

It was not till the forenoon of our fifth day at Sinai 
that the necessary arrangements were finally com- 
pleted with the three other parties, who, like our- 
selves, had resolved to attempt the journey through 
Idumsea to Petra, and thence to Hebron. We were* 
at first, to travel, as hitherto, independently, but to 
meet by a certain day at the Palm-grove of Akaba. 1 
There we should enter the territory of the Ala win 
Arabs, and thence, if our negotiations should be sue-* 
cessful, we should, joining all our forces, have to march 
as a little corps oVarmee. For, during the last five 
years, the country had been so unsettled by a war for 
the possession of Petra, and the pastures of Mount 
Seir, that this journey had not been even attempted by 
travellers. The last party that had penetrated to Petra 
had lost one, if not two, of their number. And pre- 
viously to that Miss Martineau's party had had six of 
their escort killed in a fight about the basheesh- 
plimder. Altogether, there was a pleasant touch of 
adventure, and spice of danger, in the expedition. 

But before we start, I must record the moun- 

1 As Dr. Robinson observes {Biblical Researches, vol. i. p. 253), 
' Shaw and Niebuhr only beard of Akaba ; Seetzen and Burckhardt 
attempted in vain to reacb it ; and tbe first Frank wbo visited it per- 
sonally in modern times was Eiippell, in 1822.' 

M 



162 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Past III. 



taineering feat which the countryman of mine, whom I 
had met at Major MacDonald's settlement, and the 
American clergyman, his fellow-traveller, had achieved 
from Sinai. They had not only succeeded where 
Burckhardt had failed ; they had not only got to the 
very summit of Urn Shaumer ; but instead of giving 
two days to it like the English party, whom we had 
met at Ain Musa, and who have the honour of having 
first accomplished the ascent, the Scot and the Yankee 
did it all, 4 right away,' in a day, starting from the en- 
campment under Sinai, at two o'clock a.m., and return- 
ing, not in the least 6 distrest,' about six o'clock p.m. 
And considering the hard dromedary-riding, the still 
more fatiguing climbing, and the extremes of heat and 
cold, not only between sunrise and mid-day, but be- 
tween the parcht foot of the mountain and its snowy 
summit, 9,300 feet above the sea, it must, I think, be 
acknowledged a feat not unworthy of the Anglo- 
Celtic 1 blood of the Scottish youth of four-and-twenty, 
;and the New England parson of forty. 

At length, all our arrangements being completed, 
Mr. Buckle was assisted, as usual, to get astride of 
'Lucius,' and I mounted my dromedary. But while 
we were still in the shadow of Mount Sinai we bade 
good-by to a party, a gentleman of which, as they were 
not themselves venturing to Petra, pleasantly betted 
that we should be ignominiously turned back. Whether 
we should ever have a settling-day was very doubtful ; 

1 ' Anglo-Saxon ' is an epithet not only indefensibly inaccurate, but 
in many ways pernicious, as applied to that great modern race of mixed 
Celtic and Teutonic elements speaking the composite English language. 



Chap. I. 



TO AKABA BY HA ZER O TIL 



163 



yet we did meet, again, in strange and unexpected 
fashion, as will be hereafter seen, at Damascus. 

Shortly after, turning round on my dromedary, I 
took a last look at the precipices of the Mountain of 
the Law, and the gardens of the Convent of the 
Transfiguration. We journeyed for a time in silence. 
For I was still occupied with thoughts of what I had 
seen and felt at Sinai, and particularly the previous 
day. At length, something I said to Mr. Buckle — we 
were then passing the Tomb of the saintly Sheykh, 1 
from whom this glen takes its name, — something I 
said of the terribly tragic aspect of Modern Thought, 
and the Ee volution which it is accomplishing. But Mr. 
Buckle did not seem to see it ; indeed, quite disputed 
it ; and the subject dropped. 

And yet, to be of opinion that there is no tragedy 
in doubt of the love of God and of Christ ; that one 
may cross the Eed Sea, and get into the Land of 
Promise, without passing through the Desert ; to be of 
opinion that pagans only are to be sung over the Pro- 
gress of Knowledge, seemed to me wonderful. Was 
it possible, in such a case, ever to have passionately 
believed, or logically doubted ? Could a living Faith 
ever have been assailed ? Or could Doubt ever have 
been more than an intellectual exercise? The form 
of our faith in God the Father, and in Christ the 
Saviour, the Friend, the Brother, may be, or may be 

1 Sbeykli Saleh, ' possibly the ancient prophet mentioned in the 
Kuran (vii. 71) as preaching the faith of Islam before the birth of 
Mohammed.'— Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 56; and compare Hitter, 
Sinai, p. G50. He too, then, was a revolutionist, and of the grandest 
sort. 

m 2 



164 PILGRIM-MEMORIES. Pakt IEL 



connected with 6 superstition.' But that Father and 
that Brother may be so loved that the shaking of 
faith is the shattering of life. As a matter of fact, 
Science does shake such faith ; as a matter of fact, the 
consequence is to many a living death. And that is a 
tragic experience. For what is Tragedy? What is 
the spectacle presented to us by the Master-poets in 
their tragic heroes ? What, but the fatal condition of 
felt lovelessness and loneliness ? Eecall them all, from 
Sophocles to Shakespeare ; from Antigone and (Edipus, 
to Ophelia and Lear, 

' Pri' thee, undo this button ! ' 

To the man of heroic stuff, the breath of life is love ; 
still love to the last, however unloved he may be; 
though, indeed, the grander the stature, the less merely 
personal is the affection. And when love is too rare, 
too cold to breathe, he chokes, and though, materially, 
the ' button be undone,' expires. 

And could there be any true understanding of the 
history of Man, if there were no insight into the 
Moral Forces which make so much of Human Progress 
a tragedy ? Is it not, indeed, Moral Forces, Wants of 
Oneness, Wants of the Ideal, that chiefly make of the 
succession of human events a Progress ? Moral Forces 
of no account as historical causes ? What, but Moral 
Forces clothed this desert- world with the bright ideals 
of Christianity? And in what is there hope of that 
guidance and joy which the Ideal alone can give, 
but in the historical action, once more, of Moral 
Forces, the profound moral wants of those to whom 
the world, stripped of Christianity, is a Sinai- desolation ? 



Chap. I. 



TO AKABA BY HAZEROTH. 



165 



Leaving Wady-es-Sheykh, and ascending the JSTukb 
Suweiriyeh, the pass into the wide plain of El-Wah, 
we entered on what was in every respect a distinct new 
division of our pilgrimage. Geographically, the plain 
of El-Wah is the watershed between the mountain 
group of Sinai and that of Akaba, and we get from it 
our last view of the peaks of St. Catherine, Jebel 
Musa, and Eas Sufsafeh. The journey also that now 
lies before us is through what was for a time the king- 
dom of Idumsea, but is now again the wild and unsettled 
land of Edom. Nor will the journey that now lies before 
us be less distinctly a new division of our pilgrimage in 
the thoughts that will occupy us. For as general 
result of the Sinaitic part of it, more clear to me than 
ever was the necessity of a new Ideal ; more assured 
the persuasion that this must be, like the Christian, 
essentially an historic Ideal ; and more clear the con- 
viction that the solution of the problem of the true 
definition of Moral Forces lay at the root of such a 
really adequate Philosophy of History as could alone 
serve as the basis of a new Ideal. 

So, going up the Nukb Suweiriyeh, I made some 
remarks on the necessity for true Statesmanship, of 
learning to understand something of the deeper causes, 
and ultimate results, of change in our present revolu- 
tionary period. These deeper causes, as it appeared to 
me, were certainly to be found in Moral Forces, that is 
to say, in those Wants which create Ideals, and those 
Passions which are affected by them. Without any 
sympathy with, and hence, understanding of these, all 
true statesmanship is, in these times, impossible. For 



166 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



the Ideal is the necessary atmosphere of human, as 
distinguished from mere animal, existence. If so, it 
cannot but be that the destruction, through our new 
knowledge, of the Ideal which has been for so many 
centuries the life-atmosphere of the European Peoples, 
will have, as its consequences, on the one hand, such an 
anarchy of deathful life, and on the other hand, such 
an excitement of new Wants, and creation of new 
Ideals, as will together produce sudden and vast revo- 
lutionary phenomena which the mere politician will 
be utterly unprepared for, and, futilely resisting, will 
find failure, if not death, the penalty of his inability to 
gauge the passion-momentum of their causes. Only, 
therefore, through a sympathetic understanding of the 
moral causes, even of immoral anarchy, and through 
an intellectual insight, of which the basis is such moral 
sympathy, will the statesman, fit to cope with the 
forces of such an age, be able to speak to the heart of 
the people, and, with fit audacity, to guide these forces 
to the best outcome. For it is mastery of causes alone 
that gives wealth of resource, readiness to abandon un- 
serviceable instruments, and unrelenting grasp of ends. 

This led Mr. Buckle to make his favourite distinc- 
tion between the Philosopher and the Statesman ; and 
to remark on the difference between knowledge and 
management of men ; the former being founded on 
the study of ultimate, the latter of proximate causes. 
I willingly admitted this difference. Only I contended 
that, as revolutionary times are just distinguished by 
this, that ultimate causes then affect the forms, as well 
as the foundations, of social organisation — even as, in 



Chap. I. 



TO AKABA BY HAZEROTH. 



167 



volcanic eruptions, those forces, that ordinarily but 
infinitesimally influence the terrestrial surface, then 
utterly change it — those worthy the name of statesmen 
in revolutionary times must be philosophers too. 

This distinction, however, of Causes, changed the 
subject of our discussion, and led us to that of Con- 
sciousness generally, and the opposed systems of Philo- 
sophy. In reference to these, Mr. Buckle expressed 
himself as much of the same mind with those among 
the Greeks who asserted that iracra Sofa a\rj6rjs — 
Every opinion is true. I dissented, but recalled the 
similar sentence in the 4 Thesetetus,' with which Socrates, 
as represented by Plato, sums up the discussion so far 
— akrjOrjs apa e/xot rj c/at) aicrO^crLS 1 — True then to me 
is my sensation. 

Thence we were led to speak of the dramatic 
power of the Platonic Dialogues. And I remarked 
that, as it seemed to me, it is the artistic twofoldness 
and balance with which the two great aspects of life — 
the Social and the Intellectual, the Earthly and the 
Heavenly, the terrestrial life of Action and the starry 
life of Thought — are presented in personal characterisa- 
tion and dramatic incident on the one hand, and in 
subtle dialectical discussion on the other, that it is this, 
more than anything else, that remains on memory as the 
characteristic charm of these classical Discussions. And 
there is a profounder and more impressive lesson in the 
style of Plato, thus viewed, than any, perhaps, ex- 
pressly conveyed in the words of his Dialogues. A 
lesson, however, this is which is altogether opposed 

1 Opera, t. iii. p. 434 (Bekker). 



168 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet ni. 



to that Christian Ideal which is so one-sided, and 
therefore, extravagant, and unhealthy; a lesson, emi- 
nently Greek in its Ideal of a complete and harmo- 
nious development of both, of all, the sides, or forces, 
of our nature. For this artistic twofoldness of the 
Platonic Dialogues is in complete accordance with that 
divine Ideal of Greek life — top AttoWo) top TIvOlop, 
os 7raTpcoos ecrri rfj iroXeu — c that Apollo, the Pythian, 
the Guardian of Athens ' to whom Demosthenes so 
grandly appeals in the 6 De Corona.' 

But compare as Ideals the triumphant Apollo and 
either the crucified, or the transfigured, Christ ! Never 
shall I forget the impression made on me on passing 
from the saloon in the Vatican in which one beholds, 
in his transfiguraiton, the God of Christendom, to 
the little room in which stands fitly alone the Apollo 
Belvidere. Assuredly that new Ideal of life and 
of existence, in the establishing of which the Modern 
Eevolution will be consummated, — that new Ideal will 
have to unite the moral depth of the Christian, with 
the triumphant action of the Classic, Ideal. And 
Music, I believe, Music will be the Art of the New 
Time. Por Music, developed as it might be, as the 
vehicle of a dramatic poetry, with grand themes, at 
once popular and historic, Music should seem to be 
the only Art in which the required union can be 
effected of moral depth and triumphant action. 1 But 

1 I may note that, though it was the idea of such a development of 
Music that had already, years before, urged me to the study of the 
Arthurian Komance-cycle as the needed New Mythology for that New 
Art which will give expression to the New Ideal, I was still entirely 
unacquainted with the ideas and with the works of Richard Wagner. 



Chap. I. 



TO ARAB A BY IIAZER0T1I. 



169 



our views here differed. For Music was to Mr. Buckle 
but noise. 1 

We were now in the wide plain, which is the 
watershed between the mountain-group of Sinai and 
that of Akaba. c The backward view of the Sinai 
mountains was very fine ; ' — I quote Dean Stanley, 2 not 
happening to have a description of my own — 4 St. 
Catherine, and at times Jebel Musa, and Eas Sufsafeh, 
towering above the rest ; and in front, a long bulwark 
of black jagged peaks like the Grampians.' And 
when, after a short silence, our conversation was re- 
newed, the subject of discussion in this new scene was 
that generally of Style. 

Mr. Buckle set everything on Style; attacht the 
greatest importance to its cultivation ; and declared 
that it so influenced men that that alone w^ould pre- 
serve one's fame. Hence it was that the Poets were so 
popular, and that the influence of their pernicious 
fancies was so great. My dissent from this rather 
strongly expressed opinion as to the influence of the 
Poets only provoked a more explicitly contemptuous 
denunciation of them, except the two or three greatest, 
and particularly Shakespeare and Moliere. But, he 
continued, it was from seeing the importance of Style 
thus illustrated by the influence of the Poets, that he 
had for many years devoted certain hours every day to 
analysing the Style and discovering the artifices of the 
best English authors, Hume, Berkeley, and Burke, par- 

1 In his Commonplace Booh lie has a special note, headed, 'Men of 
Genius who disliked Music' — Posthumous Works, vol. ii. p. 114. See 
Index, under the title e Music/ for other notes on the subject, 

2 Sinai and Palestine, pp. 879-80. 



170 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt III. 



ticularly. In reference to the style which he had 
himself acquired with so much labour, he spoke with 
his usual frankness. For I think this is not only a more 
charitable, but really a more just, word than vanity. 
And he made some remarks very similar to those 
reported by the American gentleman who met him 
at Cairo. He was asked at a dinner-party there by 
the American Consul-General 4 whether he had, in 
England, been subjected to personal hostility for his 
opinions, or to anything like social ostracism.' He 
said, 8 Generally not,' . . . and added : 6 In fact, the 
people of England have such an admiration of any 
kind of intellectual splendour that they will forgive for 
its sake the most objectionable doctrines.' 1 

He then, with that conversational power which 
he had so successfully cultivated as a special accom- 
plishment, dilated on the clearness of Hume and 
Berkeley ; the imagination of Burke ; the wit of Bacon 
and Voltaire ; the humour of Falstaff and Moliere ; the 
satire of Juvenal and Dry den, and the irony of Gibbon 
and Pascal. The illustrations he gave from these au- 
thors of wit and humour, and of satire and irony, led 
to some discussion as to what essentially differentiated 
these forms of rhetoric. And I ventured to suggest 
that they were characteristically sudden expressions — 
wit, of a perception of similarity ; and humour of a 
perception of difference-, and further, that satire and 
irony were distinguished from wit and humour respec- 
tively chiefly by their purpose. 

But Styles, Mr. Buckle remarked, are connected 

1 Atlantic Monthly, April, 1863, p. 491, or Appendix B. 



Chap. I. 



TO AKABA BY HAZEROTH. 



171 



with Methods, and may hence be distinguished either 
as inductive or as deductive ; a writer in the former 
style usually beginning, in the latter, closing with a 
general proposition ; this, in the one case being pre- 
ceded, in the other, followed by proofs and illustra- 
tions. As to himself, Mr. Buckle believed that he 
used both Styles, as he followed both Methods. But 
is not, I suggested, both the characteristic Style and 
the characteristic Method connected with the charac- 
teristic course pursued in one's studies ? For I think 
that Students may be distinguished as either Workers 
or Brooders. Not that the man who broods neces- 
sarily reads, or experiments less than he who is cha- 
racteristically a Worker; but his reading or experi- 
mentation is not in such regular and ordinary courses. 
Mr. Buckle admitted that, as I contended, the plan 
followed by the brooding student would probably give 
a greater intensity to his reading or experimenting 
work, when he did fall to it, and carry him over the 
hardest ground with the thoroughness, as well as 
swiftness, of passion. But he maintained that his 
own plan was the best. He liked thinking, he said, 
but seldom gave himself up to it. He read, in order 
that he might think, rather than thought, in order 
that he might read, and advised me to do the same. 

But we had now crossed the plain, and found our 
tents pitched for us at the opening of the grand ravine 
of Wady S'al. We thus ended our day's journey rather 
earlier than usual. But I was thus more fresh for 
pursuing those reflections which had been suggested 
by our discussion, and hence seeing the deeper bearings 



172 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



of the opinions expressed by Mr. Buckle on the im- 
portance of Style. It became clear to me, for instance, 
that, for Mr. Buckle to have admitted that the power 
of the Poets was, at least, as much due to their ideas, 
as to their style, would have required a complete re- 
casting of an historical method which eliminated 
Moral Forces as agents of Progress. And as to the 
cultivation of Style ; though I had willingly conceded 
to him that it is a delusion, which experience very 
quickly dissipates, to imagine that honesty without 
manner, or truth without style, have much chance in 
this world ; yet clear it now became that, to get a fine 
style, the careful reading of fine writers, though a 
necessary, is but a complementary preparation. The 
Kuran is the very gem of Arabic style. But Moham- 
med had not only studied the external forms of the 
masterpieces, at that time, of the language, but had 
got something to say, and a Faith to say it in. 

Through the pass of Wady S'al we entered on a 
plain of deep sand with isolated rocks. This plain we 
took two days to cross, camping in the midst of it one 
night. And as deep sand is the characteristic popularly 
associated with the notion of all deserts, it may be worth 
mentioning that this was the first sandy desert we had 
to traverse. The very name, indeed, of this tract of 
desert separating the northern table-land of the Tih 
from the southern mountains of the Tur — Debbet-er- 
Eamleh, the Sandy Plain — indicates that sand is the 
exception, and not the rule, of the Arabian desert. 
And nothing like it could I recall except my slight 
experience of the Sahara. 



Chap. I. TO AKABA BY HAZERO TIL 173 



Kesuming our discussion next day, the considera- 
tions with which we had yesterday concluded, as to 
the relation between Styles and Methods, naturally led 
us back again to our general subjects of Causation, Me- 
thod, and the Classification of the Sciences, the latter, 
in my view, intimately connected with the tw r o former. 
But Causation brought us to Creation ; that, to the 
Origin ; and that, to the antiquity of the Human Eace. 
And then came up the subject of the principles of the 
measurement of Time, geological and philological, the 
latter especially started by me in reference to certain 
conclusions of Bunsen's 'Egypt.' Changes of Lan- 
guage, Mr. Buckle maintained, to be due to in- 
creasing subordination of ranks, — the higher classes 
bringiug in new forms, softening pronunciation, drop- 
ping inflections, &c, and he referred to Pickering's 
5 Americanisms,' and to Plato's remarks on the influence 
of women in preserving (from their greater conser- 
vatism) old words and idioms. It seemed to me, 
however, that such causes of linguistic change were 
included in the larger cause of the introduction of new 
ideas through changed political and social conditions. 

But — ' The Cobra ! ' — suddenly from the height of 
my dromedary I called-out. Admirably prompt and 
vigorous were the kicks which Mr. Buckle then dealt 
to 'Lucius,' — kicks, however, which that meditative 
animal, in general so affectionately treated, instantly 
resented by flinging up his heels, and disconcerting 
Mr. Buckle's seat with his indignant astonishment. 
But Mr. Buckle thus only just saved himself from 
the beautiful deadly snake which, erect on its tail, 



174 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



•with outblbwn hood and quivering forked tongue, 
was in the very act to spring at his leg, which hung 
conveniently low as he sat on his donkey. Time itself, 
as well as its measurement, was thus very near being 
ended for Mr. Buckle. I stopt my dromedary to get 
down to kill die sclidne Schlange, the Fair Snake, in the 
bush, to which she (doubtless, she) had retreated ; and 
this, as a duty to future travellers. Such a duty, how- 
ever, was utterly scouted by Mr. Buckle ; and I confess 
that I was too easily dissuaded from my purpose. As 
for Mr. Buckle, he contented himself with inveighing 
against that improvidence of Fate, through which the 
career even of a great philosopher may be stopt short 
by the most contemptible agent, and the most fortuitous 
accident. But after having thus given vent to his 
outraged feelings, — Time still going on for him — we 
continued the discussion of the principles of its mea- 
surement. 

The next day, and while still in this sandy part 
of the Desert, though the more abstract subjects 
above-noted continued to be the main topics of dis- 
cussion, there was an episode, as it were, on the School 
of Alexandria, and its place in the history of the Chris- 
tian Eevolution. I had not then specially studied this 
subject. But, Mr. Buckle having thus turned my at- 
tention to it, when I did take it up, the results were, 
as it appeared to me, in the highest degree antagonistic 
to Mr. Buckle's views of History and of Historical 
Method. For, as I have elsewhere 1 pointed-out at 

1 In the Morningland, bk. i. ch. i. ; The Christian Revolution in its 
Intellectual Aspect. 



Chat. I. 



TO ARAB A BY IIAZEROTH. 



175 



some length, the study of the causes of the opposition 
of the Alexandrian thinkers, and of all those thoroughly 
imbued with the spirit of Greek Science, to the new 
Oriental religion of Christianism, throws the most pene- 
trating, and, as it were, electric light on the real nature 
of that Eevolution consummated in the triumph of the 
religion of the Galilsean Fishermen. According to Mr. 
Buckle, a new religion is, like all other great historical 
phenomena, simply the result of an increase of know- 
ledge. But according to the historical fact, the new 
religion of Christianism was an immense intellectual 
retrogression. And it was because it was seen to be 
such a retrogression, that it was opposed by the great 
School of the Neo-Platonists. 

The religions of the First Age of Humanity, — 
which, for the sake of a word which does not, like 
Paganism, or Heathenism, imply an ignorant Christian 
misjudgment, I have named Naturianism — these reli- 
gions had been, by a great variety of antagonistic 
influences, constituting, in fact, a vast pre-Christian 
Eevolution, wholly disintegrated ; and men no more 
believed in Jehovah, in Osiris, or in Jupiter as be- 
fore. But, though knowledge had been immensely 
increased, and speculation magnificently developed 
among a few, the vast majority of every nation of the 
civilised world were as grossly ignorant of the true 
relations of phenomena, and hence, their myth-creating 
imagination was as undisciplined, and their myth-be- 
lieving credulity as great, as ever. Could there, then, 
be a more complete refutation of a theory of the im- 
potency, a more convincing proof of the fact of the 



176 



RIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



immeasurable potency, of Moral Forces as historical 
causes than the triumph of such a religion as Chris- 
tianism ? Intellectually, it was but a revival of myths 
by all the thinkers of antiquity seen through, and of 
superstitions by all the classic moralists contemned. 
Could there, then, be a stronger proof of the necessity to 
human life of an atmosphere of the Ideal, and hence, of 
the potency of those forces arising from that necessity, 
than the triumph of a religion which, men being, as yet, 
in the crassitude of their ignorance, unprepared for any- 
thing better, carried them back with a new fervour to 
myths and superstitions, intellectually so undistinguish- 
able from those of the most developed of the Heathen 
religions, that a general description of the main dogmas 
of Osirianism would perfectly well serve as a general 
description of the doctrines of Christianism ? 1 

But how boundless is the power of education in 
moulding the human mind, blinding it to absurdities, and 
reconciling it to contradictions ! Christianism having, 
amid the upbreak of the old Social Order, the irruptions 
of the Barbarians, and the intellectual night of the 
6 Premedia^val Centuries ' 2 got established ; and having 
then given birth to immense educating agencies, not 
only in the organisation of its Institutions, but in the 
splendour of its Art, and in the subtlety of its Philo- 
sophy ; we now, we who not only read, and are in 
some measure impregnated with the spirit and the ideas 

1 See In the Morningland, bk. i. ch. I, The Cause of the Christian 
Development of Religion. 

2 The five centuries which I have distinguished as the Barbarian 
Period, from the sixth to the tenth century. See In the Morningland, 
Introduction, p. 223, and also Arthurian Localities, pp. 2-6. 



Chap. I. 



TO AKABA BY HAZEROTIL 



177 



of those Classic thinkers who either would have, or 
actually did, utterly reprobate and contemn the legends 
of the Jews, and myths of the Galilseans ; we, who 
are besides acquainted with a vast number of new 
physical and historical facts justifying that reprobation 
and contempt ; we, educated at the same time, in the 
belief of those legends and myths, we believe, or stoop to 
pretend to believe, that these sands here have a £ sacred 
interest,' because it should seem that they may be 
identified 1 with those where the anger of the God of 
the barbarian horde of the Beni-Israel was c kindled 
greatly;' 2 where, according to the tradition of their 
Pentateuch, their God, having promised that the people 
should eat of flesh, 6 even a whole month, until it came 
out at their nostrils,' 3 sent 'forth a wind and brought 
quails from the sea, and let them fall .... round 
about the camp,' and as it were two cubits high 
upon the face of the earth;' 4 yet immediately, — 
and notwithstanding his solemn promise, that £ ye 
shall not eat one day, nor two days, neither ten 
days, nor twenty days, but even a whole month,' 5 — 
immediately, £ and while the flesh was yet between their 
teeth, ere it was chewed, .... smote the people with 
a very great plague.' 0 And scholars and gentlemen 
can bring themselves to write of this as if they believed 
that it was all a literal fact just as narrated, and think 
it worth while to suggest an ' explanation,' exceedingly 
lame, however, 'of the difficult passage,' 7 'two cubits 

1 Stanle3^, Sinai and Palestine, pp. 81-3. 

2 Numbers xi. 10. s Ibid. 20. 

4 Numbers xi. 31. 5 Ibid. 9, 10. 6 Ibid. 33. 

7 See Stanley, Sinai and Bcl stine, pp. 82-3. 



178 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet in. 



high upon the face of the earth ; ' as if there were not 
profoundly greater difficulty in conceiving the God 
here presented to us as anything else than the mere 
offspring of the intellectual ignorance, and reflection of 
the moral character, of nomad savages ; profoundly 
greater difficulty, therefore, in conceiving the whole 
narrative as anything else than a barbarian legend, of 
interest only as illustrative of primitive culture ! 

Yet wonderful as is the power of education in 
making it possible for men to acquaint themselves with 
Classic Literature, and with the facts of Modern Science, 
Physical and Historical, and still honestly profess belief 
in Christian myths and legends, we have it all paralleled 
in the schools of the Neo-Platonists. For that study 
of Neo-Platonism, in its relation to Christianism, to 
which Mr. Buckles remarks in the course of this 
day's journey were one of the means of more specially 
directing me, not only had, as its result, the throwing 
of quite a new light on the intellectual character of 
the Christian Ee volution ; but gave a most instruc- 
tive historical parallel to that Broad- Churchism which, 
with such wonderful sophistries, reconciles itself to 
the profession of belief in the myths of Christianism. 
Just as our Modern Latitudinarians, so, as I have else- 
where 1 more fully pointed- out, the ancient JSTeo-Pla- 
tonists, while holding themselves entirely aloof from 
the literal beliefs of the vulgar, still, by the help partly 
of physical or historical 4 explanations,' and partly of 

1 See In the Morningland, bk. i. ch. i., and particularly sects, i. 
and iii., The Relation of Neo-Plotonism to Olympiamsm, and The 
Relation of Broad-Churchism to Nco-Platonism. 



CnAr. I. 



TO ARAB A BY HAZEROTH. 



179 



mystical allegorisings, professed themselves, and were, 
in fact, ardent supporters of the old religion. But, as 
I have also pointed-out, Neo-Platonism fought for a 
true intellectual conception, or, for what must be ad- 
mitted to have been, at worst, the metaphysical 
rudiments of such a conception ; while Broad-Church- 
ism contends for a false intellectual conception. The 
Neo-Platonic interpretations of myth had for their 
ultimate object the defence of what was essentially the 
notion of Law against that of Miracle ; while the Broad- 
Church interpretations of myth have for their object 
the defence of some more or less attenuated notion of 
Miracle against that of Law. And while Neo-Pla- 
tonism fell because it opposed what was distinctively, 
though this it could not see, a Moral Eevolution ; Broad- 
Churchism, in all its thousand forms, will fall, because 
it opposes what is distinctively, though this it refuses to 
see, an Intellectual Eevolution. 

Nothing like the sandy plain which was the scene of 
this fruitful episode in our discussions could I — as I have 
above said — recall, except my slight experience of the 
Sahara. It was a little below Asouan. We had moored. 
And, shortly before sunset, I went ashore to see what 
I could see from the top of the rocky bank above 
us. There was sand, nothing but sand, and amid its 
vast breadth, the Nile, broad as it had hitherto ap- 
peared, seemed now but a thread. And in reality 
this Desert is, with its offshoots, almost half a zone 
round the earth. 1 I saw an eminence at some distance, 

1 It extends from Persia, and is prolonged many miles into the 
Atlantic. See References, Buckle, History of Civilisation, vol. i. p. 44. 

n 2 



180 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



and, if I could gain it, I should be content, and return. 
But when I had gained it, there was before me another 
vast sandy billow. The crest of that also I must gain, 
for it seemed nearer the sun. And so on, to one billow- 
crest after another, striding as swiftly as I could over 
the deep sands. But suddenly I found the sun had 
set, and that it was almost dark. What words can 
describe how deeply, in that vast stillness of ensphering 
air, and that terrible breadth of dark Desert, I felt that 
all this poor life of ours is but such a march as that in 
which the sudden- falling darkness had stopt me ! And 
yet when one looked about, and saw many foot- 
prints of hyaenas, found difficulty hi retracing one's 
own, and recollected that one was unarmed even with 
a stick or a stone, one became rather anxious to 
preserve even such a Desert-wandering life a little 
longer ! 

This Desert-experience has ever had for me a 
vividly symbolical meaning, nor only one of a more 
general, but one also of a more special character. For 
could anything more fitly image the futility of the 
effort of Neo-Platonists to retain Olympianism, or 
the futility of the similar effort of Broad-Church- 
men to retain Ghristianism, than a man's striding at 
sunset across the billows of a sandy ocean, as if thus 
he could retain the Sun of a past day, and not make 
only more appalling in its loneliness the swiftly- 
falling darkness ? As the Sun of Olympianism, not- 
withstanding all the futile striding after it of the ISTeo- 
Platonists, set, so is setting now the Sun of Christianisn ; 
and it were wiser to inquire after the New Ideal which 



Cmr. I. 



TO AKABA BY HAZEROTIL 



181 



will be the Sun of a New Civilisation, than vainly to 
seek to retain that which has done its work, and had 
its day, and now but causes the pestilential vapours and 
fever-breeding chills of sundown. 

In our after-dinner talk this evening, seated at the 
tent door, Mr. Buckle spoke with great complacency of 
his victories at Chess, and of the combination of caution 
and boldness, as he believed, that equally characterized 
his play and his work. Much curious information he 
had also to give on the subject of Chess. 1 Among the 
rest, he had the candour to mention that Sir Walter 
Scott had given it up after boyhood. For, 4 Surely,' he 
said, ' chess-playing is a sad waste of brains.' But for 
this I may now refer the reader to Mr. Buckle's 
6 Commonplace-Book.' The late Mr. Staunton gave 
me one or two very dramatic anecdotes of Mr. Buckle 
as a chess-player, which, however, I do not here con- 
sider myself at liberty to repeat. But the remarks 
recently made by Herr von der Lasa on the respective 
play of Mr. Staunton and of Mr. Buckle may be read 
with interest, and I give them in a footnote. 2 

The next day, as we journeyed through the grand 
and beautiful pass of Wady-el-Ain, the Glen of the 

1 See Commonplace-Book, articles 241, 289, 290, 1126, and 2212. 
Post. Works, vols. ii. and iii. 

2 1 In my opinion the latter, though very correct in his calculations, 
and perhaps, in a serious match, a safer player than Staunton, was never- 
theless inferior to him if we take the whole style of play into considera- 
tion. A certain monotony prevails in all the games of Buckle, and the 
defensive move of K.'sP. 1 in the beginning occurs too often. Staunton's 
play undoubtedly belonged to a higher and more varied order of com- 
binations. Your scale of appreciation of the play of the two celebrated 
amateurs, though it equally tends to deny Buckle's superiority, does not 
hold good so far as the indications of time are concerned. You cannot 



182 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



Fountain, we again recurred to the subject of Style. 
For now I saw it more clearly to be a question of Art 
generally, and possessed, therefore, of the most im- 
portant bearings. And so the discussion gradually 
widened, as it went on. 

It was interrupted, however, soon after we struck 
out of the Wady-el-Ain into the Wady-Wetir, by 
something springing up from under my dromedary 
which startled the beast a good deal. I found to my 
great surprise that it was a dog with whom I had 
struck up a friendship at Major MacDonald's settle- 
ment. Young Arab that he was, he had got tired of 
his home comforts there, and had resolved to see the 
world. To trace us so long a way, and to support 
himself thus alone for ten days in the desert, indicated 
very considerable talent, not to say genius, for travelling 
and foraging. When he was disturbed by my drome- 
dary's foot, he was enjoying a siesta in a hole he had 
made himself in the sand, as a shelter from the 
sun. I need hardly say that the e Major,' as I named 
him, became a general favourite. But, gay libertine of 
a young dog, there was not one among all the four 
parties which united at Akaba who could establish a 
claim to be his exclusive favourite. He was a general 
lover ; refused no one's hospitality ; and would come to 

fairly compare Buckle, when playing in Berlin, to tStauntou, shortly after 
the London tournament of 1851. Buckle's visit to Berlin took place 
already eight years earlier. He then played some games with Bledow, 
against whom he lost the majority, hut none of the games has been 
preserved. With me Buckle did not play more than three very in- 
different games, of which he lost the first and last, and won the second.' 
— Letter to the City of London Chess Magazine, copied in the Athenaeum, 
20th of February, 1875. 



Chap. I. 



TO AKABA BY HAZEROTH. 



183 



the bed of any one who would let him. And as one or 
two others besides myself wished to appropriate him, 
and take him to Europe, the 'Major 5 saved us any 
unpleasantness that might thence have arisen, by sud- 
denly taking leave of us all, when, having got out of 
the Arabian Deserts, he was able to find for himself 
new friends. So he let us go to Jericho alone. 

But we were now getting rather anxious to meet 
the Bedawin whom we had sent from Sinai to make 
inquiries at Akaba about getting on to Petra. So I 
rode on a little way ahead down this grand pass of 
Wady-Wetir, with its red precipitous rocks, its white 
sand underfoot, and its scattered green vegetation. 
Suddenly, as I was reflecting on our late discussion, 
the expected Bedawin comes in sight, his dromedary 
in full swing. In a minute or two he is with us. 
4 Good news ! We shall get on to Petra ! ' cries Hassan 
the Dragoman. 



184 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



CHAPTER II. 

THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 

Section I. — The Origin of a New Eeligiox. 

A little further, and there arose, as it were, a vision, — . 
so beautiful was the appearance, yet indistinct, — at the 
end of the Pass. But hardly less beautiful than the 
nameless vision was the reality it soon became of 
the exquisitely tinted mountains, range beyond range, 
above the further Arabian shore ; while below, was a 
various-gleaming azure sea, and many-coloured golden 
sands. Soon after w T e got out of the Pass, we pitched 
our tents above the beach, the beach of the Gulf of 
Akaba, which, here about fourteen miles broad, runs up 
from the Indian Ocean. It is the ancient Gulf of Elath 
or Ezion-Gebir, but is now as shipless and solitary as, 
indeed, it has been for more than two thousand years, 
since Solomon was in ' all the glory ' of that petty 
kingdom 1 then temporarily independent of either of 
the vast empires between which it lay — Egypt on the 
south and west, and Assyria and Persia on the east. 
And here we found encamped three of the other 
parties on pilgrimage to Petra, and bound to meet 
at the Palm-grove of Akaba. 

1 It must surely "be as a theologian rather than as a scholar that 
Dean Stanley speaks of Jerusalem as once 'the capital of a mighty 
empire ' (!). See Sinai and Palestine, p. 7, and compare pp. 113, fig. 



Chai>. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 185 



The next clay, walking or riding along a shell- and 
coral-covered strand, — on our right, the sea, red with 
the coralline forests of its depths, 1 and with a margin 
so bright and clear that, as we rode, we saw all its gem- 
like pavement ; on our left, sandstone precipices, of the 
most magnificently varied hues, — the symphonies of 
colour-music were almost overpowering. I had, in- 
deed, often to shut for a moment my eyes, as one 
would stop one's ears to waves of sound too ravish - 
ingly prolonged. Nor was I singular in being so much 
affected by the magnificence of this glorious shore. 
Mr. Buckle was, I believe, equally enchanted. For 
already in Egypt he had begun ' to like colour more 
than form.' Till then, he 4 had always preferred form 
to colour.' And was not this characteristic and in 
perfect keeping with his philosophy? For does not 
colour express the infinite of feeling more than form, 
painting more than sculpture ? Is not painting essen- 
tially the Christian Art ? Is not, indeed, the moral 
significance of Christianity, judged apart from its Creed, 
to be found in a new feeling of, and longing after, the 
Infinite ? And if there is any truth in this suggestion 
as to the mental relations of colour and form respec- 
tively, may not this change in Mr. Buckle's preference 
of the one to the other be taken as an indication that, 
had he lived, we should possibly have found in his 
system a great enlargement of feeling, and hence, 
such an enlargement of view as would more truly 
have estimated the effect of Moral Forces, and made 
his philosophy less of a pure Materialism ? 

1 Sinai and Palestine, p. 5, and note, p. 83: — 'Rubrum mare et 
totus orientis oceanus refertus est sylvis.' — Pliny, xiii. 25. 



18G 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



It was here, amid the excitement of these glorious 
scenes, during one day of encamped rest and three 
days of slow march along the western shore, and 
during nearly a week at the Palm-grove at the upper 
end of the eastern shore, a station of the Mecca pilgrim- 
age, that the main and central series of our discussions 
was carried on, of which I have notes so ample, and 
recollections so vivid, as enable me to give them in a 
dialogue form. Through these discussions I was my- 
self much advanced in my great aim, the discovery 
of an ultimate Law of History. And the record 
of them in such a more extended form may, I 
trust, have for the reader some interest as well as in- 
struction. 

Mr. Buckle again urged the analytical study and 
systematic cultivation of Style, as of the first im- 
portance. 

Author. To get ideas appears to me to be the first 
thing ; and to nurse oneself in just passions of love of 
truth, and hatred of lies. Style will then come of 
itself, — the core of it, at least. After that, one may 
think of mere beauty of form. Without ideas, any 
approach to splendour of style seems to me impossible ; 
with it, sure. Without ideas one may attain the polished 
forms of rhetoric ; only with ideas, the living fire of 
eloquence. 

B. I do not think that there is any such necessity 
for ideas, in order to the attainment of pre-eminence in 
style. Look at Virgil and Bolingbroke. Though mas- 
ters of style, they had neither a moral impulse to write, 
nor great ideas to convey. 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 187 

A. Well, I know little of Bolingbroke ; hut I cer- 
tainly cannot agree with you as to Virgil. The Empire 
was his idea ; and his impulse, a vision of the fusion of 
all races and nations in a millennial Peace. That idea 
and that vision were the causes of his style ; and these, 
not his style merely, were the causes of Virgil himself 
being for sixteen centuries the undisputed King of 
European Literature. 

B. I think you quite overrate him, and imagine 
more in him than there really was. 

A. Well, the question cannot be settled by a discus- 
sion of the characteristics of any particular writers. It 
involves another much more general. If one considers 
it, the scientific principles of criticising different Styles 
can be but corollaries from the more general principles 
on which are founded our judgments of different epochs 
of Art. Now, not to enter on the question of a Stan- 
dard, and admitting, (as, except for the moment, I do 
not,) that the Standard is a matter of individual opinion 
or taste ; then, for myself, I do not hesitate to say that 
I judge a work of Art, first of all, by its ideal aim, and 
quite secondarily, by the technical excellence of its 
form. In the work of the very best epochs, these two 
elements are found in almost equal perfection. Yet I 
think the earlier periods which are defective in form, 
incomparably preferable to the later, defective in feel- 
ing. And hence, neither in the art of words, 
nor in any other form of artistic expression, would 
it be possible for me to acknowledge a really 
masterly style without a moral impulse, and great 
ideas. 



188 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



B. It requires ranch cultivation and refinement of 
taste to appreciate a good style. 

A. Undoubtedly ; and I most readily admit also 
that one of the advantages of those who look more to 
forms than to ideas, is that they sooner gain such 
refinement of taste for technical excellence. 

Mr. Buckle then expatiated on the masterly quali- 
ties of Macaulay's style, and the 6 jargon,' as it appeared 
to him, of Carlyle. But amid the overpowering beauty 
of the scene, the discussion soon dropt. After a time 
it was resumed ; but in a somewhat new direction. 

B. Our present experience seems to me to confirm 
the views I have expressed as to the influence of the 
aspects of Nature on the Eastern Peoples. Scenes like 
these, and their splendour of colouring especially, can- 
not but stimulate the imagination. And in this may, I 
think, be found the explanation of the synthetic tendency 
observable in Eastern thought. 

A. And hence, the explanation of the origin of all 
our religions in the Morningland? No doubt, at any 
rate, such scenes as are characteristic of Nature in the 
East stimulate the imagination ; and, no doubt, the 
predominance of the imagination, and idealist, syn- 
thetic, and deductive tendencies are all connected. 
But to stimulate is not to create. The impressible 
imagination may co-exist with, but is not a sequence 
or effect of such scenes. And the internal forces of 
Eace must be considered as well as the external forms 
of Nature. 

B. As to Eace, I do not think that we have any 
decisive ground for saying that the moral and intellec- 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 189 



tual faculties of man are likely to be greater in an 
infant born in the most civilised part of Europe, than 
in one born in the wildest region of a barbarous 
country. 

A. Well, we need not enter on the question of 
Eace at present ; nor, on the connected questions as to 
the causes of National and of Individual differences of 
character. But what you say as to the influence of 
certain aspects of Nature in stimulating the imagina- 
tion ; and as to the influence, again, of the development 
of the imagination in determining an analytic or syn- 
thetic, inductive or deductive, materialist or idealist, 
tendency in philosophy, suggests to me the true answer 
to what you said the other day as to the proper method 
of study. 

B. How so ? I said that one should first know all 
that had been written on a subject before attempting to 
think it out. And I said that my own reading had 
been all on the most regular plan, and that I seldom 
gave myself up to thinking. 

A. It seems, then, to me that one should not say, 
either that a student ought to read, and then think, 
or ought to brood, and then read ; but that he ought to 
follow whichever of these methods he falls into most 
spontaneously ; and that, which of the two it is, will 
depend on his general analytic or synthetic, materialist 
or idealist tendency. Nor can one say which method 
of study is abstractly best. Both are necessary. Veri- 
fication is the work of the one ; discovery, of the other. 
For I think it will be found that all discoverers, whether 
of the religious, or of the scientific class, — whether, for 



190 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



example, of the class of Jesus, or of the class of Newton, 
— owe their immortality to their faculty of brooding, 
their capability of what one may almost call a third 
state of existence — Trance. 

Again, however, discussion became impossible, so 
magical were the lights now thrown over sea and 
shore. Our day's journey, too, was over ; and our 
people were pitching the tents. But contemplation is 
nothing. When Beauty is passionately loved, there is 
ever the desire to possess, or be possessed by it. So 
I went clown, and leapt into the arms of the Sirens that 
beckoned from the sunset-radiant Sea. 

Next morning we drest and breakfasted at leisure. 
For it had been resolved to have a clay's rest by the 
sea ; partly to wait for a brigade of the Petra corps 
tfarmee ; partly because the scene was so beautiful ; 
partly because it was Sunday. About three o'clock, 
in the midst of a sudden hurricane, nearly blowing 
our tents into the sea, the expected brigade came up, 
and, on the wind falling, encamped beside us. Mr. 
Buckle and I had no discussion that day, as I was 
writing in my tent on the subject which had so im- 
pressed me at Sinai. But before dinner I bathed, and 
in the evening Hamilton joined us, and gave us an 
account of his Jesuit education at Stonyhurst. The 
day after, all moved on ; we, however, in the rear, and 
more leisurely; taking two days to what the others 
accomplished in one. And so, we resumed our 
discussions, — walking arm-in-arm, or riding, along 
the shell-strewn beach, or, with the camels and 
dromedaries splashing through the water round the 



Chap II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 101 

promontories, — till we came to the grand pass, Nnkb- 
Huweimirat. 

A. I have been thinking over our discussion 
on Style, and it seems to me that, as Style led us to 
Art, Art must now lead us to Eeligion. A good Style 
is a good artistic Manner. And we cannot properly 
discuss a good manner in writing, without reference to 
the characteristics of a good manner in other forms of 
expression. For what is judged a good Style depends 
on our relative appreciation of the ideal and formal 
elements in Art generally. We have agreed that Art- 
epochs differ chiefly in the relations to each other of 
these two elements in the products of such epochs. 
But now, whence arises this ideal element ; and what 
determines its variability? It seems to me that, con- 
sidering the relations of Art and Eeligion, we had 
better at once state the question as : What is the cause 
of a New Eeligion ? 

B. Well, as to that, you know that I most dis- 
tinctly maintain that a New Eeligion originates simply 
and solely in a previous extension of Knowledge. A 
country that continues in its old ignorance, will always 
remain in its old religion. Surely nothing can be 
plainer than this. As to moral agencies, in the first 
place, they are statical causes, and, therefore, cannot 
produce new, or progressive effects ; secondly, though 
moral causes may have important effects on individuals, 
they can have no effect on the mass, because, when the 
area is extended, disturbing causes are eliminated ; and 
thirdly, the historical effect of moral causes being thus 
disproved, there remains only the hypothesis of a 



192 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Past III. 



previous extension of knowledge as the cause of a New 
Religion. 

A. Your first argument then is : that moral agencies 
are statical forces ? 

B. Decidedly. Because there is, unquestionably, 
nothing to be found in the world which has undergone 
so little change as those great dogmas of which moral 
systems are composed ? 

A. Well, in the first place, even admitting that 
moral dogmas have undergone less change than any- 
thing else in the world, I do not see how that would 
prove them to be stationary agents, or statical forces, 
incapable of producing change, or progress. For a 
statical, is a counterbalanced, force ; such a force 
as, if you set it, and the resistance to it on one 
side, you must equate them with zero. It would 
be necessary, therefore, further to show that there 
is a constant relation of equality between these 
moral truths and the resisting obtuseness of mankind 
which prevents them ever producing a change or 
movement. 

B. I think it sufficient to show that the resistance 
is diminished by intellectual, not moral, causes. That 
is to say, I have shown that, if moral dogmas have any 
general effect at all, or a greater effect in one age than 
in another, it is owing to a previous extension of 
Knowledge. And, in proving this, I have shown 
particularly that, in abating the two most pernicious of 
crimes, Intolerance and War, our moral feelings have 
had no share at all. 

A. I am quite willing to admit the great influence 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 193 

of intellectual acquirements in diminishing Eeligious 
Persecution ; and the great influence, also, of the in- 
vention of gunpowder, the science of Political Eco- 
nomy, and the application of steam to travelling, in 
weakening the Warlike Spirit. But what has to be 
proved is, that moral agencies have had no effect 
whatever in producing these, or any other historical 
phenomena. Now my second objection to your first 
argument is that moral agencies are not exhausted by 
an enumeration of the dogmas of moral systems. Are 
not the Passions, the unuttered Wants and Longings 
of Mankind, moral agencies ? Are they not concerned 
in causing, for instance, Intolerance and War ? And if 
they are, how does it advance the argument to exclude 
them from the production of Tolerance and Peace ? 

B. These are, undoubtedly, moral agencies, and 
greatly influence action. But do you not see the scien- 
tific distinction between the Laws of the Individual 
and the Laws of the Mass ? 

A. Ah. I that brings us to your second argument. 

B. Well, if you consider it, I think you will have 
to admit that it is quite irrelevant to talk of the effect 
of moral agencies on individuals. For, in historical 
phenomena, we consider great masses of individuals, 
and long periods of time, and the effects on indivi- 
duals are, then, necessarily eliminated. 

A. I am sorry that I do not clearly see the force 
of the reasoning. But do we mean the same thing in 
speaking of the difference between the laws of the In- 
dividual and the laws of the Mass ? What I under- 
stand by the distinction between the Individual and 

0 



194 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



the Mass, is simply this : that phenomena which are 
irregular when the individual only is considered, will 
be found to be perfectly regular when the area is suffi- 
ciently extended to eliminate, by counterbalancing, 
each interference. 

B. Well, that is rightly , enough stated. Take a 
dozen married couples, and the proportion of boys to 
girls will be so different for each couple that no law 
will be discoverable ; and hence, the thing will be con- 
sidered to depend on the Lord. But, take a suffi- 
ciently large number, and the personal circumstances 
which make one couple have too many boys will be 
counterbalanced by those which make another couple 
have too many girls ; all casual disturbances will be 
eliminated ; and the law will be ascertained that, for 
every twenty girls, there are born twenty-one boys. 

A . That very well illustrates what I perfectly agree 
with you about ; namely, that, on extending the area, 
a -f may be eliminated by a — interference. But to 
apply this principle to the elimination of those pas- 
sions and moral wants, which you admit to be effective 
moral agencies with regard to the individual, you must, 
of course, assume that these passions and moral wants, 
on an extension of area, counterbalance each other, as 
-f and — quantities? 

B. Well? 

A. Why, just take an illustration of what this re- 
quires us to affirm. We were talking the other day 
about the influence of Style. I quite agreed with you, 
you remember, as to the fact ; though I ventured to 
think that, as a really fine Style must have a fine Idea, 



Chap. If. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 195 

the influence of Style was due, at least, as much to its 
ideal, as to its formal, element. Well, -without recur- 
ring to this difference, it is enough that we both 
acknowledge the fact of the immense influence of 
Style ; and further, that Style, like the passion it ex- 
presses and appeals to, is a moral agency. Now your 
general assumption is, in this particular case, nothing 
else than that the likes and dislikes of any given Style 
so certainly counterbalance each other that the total 
effect may be eliminated as 0. And so, in any other 
case, I understand you to hold that every effect of 
passion, or of its artistic product, is eliminated by a 
counterbalancing effect ? 

B. Not exactly. These moral agencies are, I think, 
certainly to be disregarded in considering the mass. 
But this may be, not only in consequence of their 
being so counterbalanced ; but also because, though 
existing uncounteracted, they become of infinitesimal 
importance in relation to the greater law of the greater 
area. 

A. I adopt the correction ; but only to assure you 
that there is no difference between us as to the fact 
that there are forces or agencies which, on extending 
the area of investigation, may be disregarded, either 
from being counteracted, or becoming relatively in- 
finitesimal. I only dispute your assertion that moral 
forces generally are such agencies. The passions and 
wants of an individual may produce actions which, in 
the wide area, which is the field of History, may be 
either eliminated, as counteracted, or disregarded, as infi- 
nitesimal. But surely it does not follow that those pas- 

o 2 



196 PILGRIM-MEMORIES. Pakt III. 

sions and wants of nations, which produce truly historical 
actions, are to be disregarded by History? I agree 
with you as to the great effects produced by advances 
in knowledge. But the stream would not flow, if there 
were not an adequate inclination. 

B. Well, I cannot be expected to go over again 
all the arguments by which I have proved, what is 
the fundamental position of my book, — the non-effect 
of moral agencies, as historical causes. 

By this time we had come to the Pass, and had to 
proceed up the steep and narrow ledge on the moun- 
tain-side, in single file, and with such care as to inter- 
rupt, for a time, our discussion. On getting down on 
the other side I resumed. 

A. This matter we have been discussing has, for 
me, much more than a merely speculative importance. 
So, if you are inclined for another round, I would say 
that it seems to me that our logical position is simply 
this : I dispute the arguments by which you maintain, 
or rather the propositions from which you infer, that a 
JSTew Eeligion originates in a previous extension of 
knowledge. This deductive inference must, therefore, 
be verified. And as no moral phenomenon is more 
important than a New Eeligion, there can be none, an 
examination of which will more certainly prove, or 
more clearly refute, your theory as to the non-effect 
of moral forces. 

B. But I have not left it to be inferred ; but have 
expressly shown, not only that Literature and Legisla- 
tion, but that Eeligion also, so far from being the cause 
of improvement, is at best only its effect. 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 197 

A. All ! now comes 8 the tug of war ! ' I admit 
the force of all the facts you bring forward on this 
subject, in, I believe, your fifth chapter ; and yet, if I 
may speak frankly, your conclusion seems to me un- 
proved. 

B. You know the story of the man who said he 
undertook to provide arguments, but not brains to 
understand them. 

A. Well, perhaps, I laid myself open to such a 
retort. But, seriously, even admitting the force of 
what you say as to the corruption of Mosaism by the 
barbarous Hebrews, and of Christianity, by the ido- 
latrous Pagans among whom it was introduced ; or by 
the savage communities among whom it may now be 
preacht ; what bearing has that on the question, not of 
the diffusion, but of the origin, of these admittedly 
purer religions ? 

B. I did not consider it necessary to enter into any 
detailed investigation of the origin of those Faiths, 
or of Eeligions, generally. For I do not see how a 
New Eeligion can arise from anything but new ex- 
perience. 

A. In one sense I might admit that myself; for 
' experience ' is a wide word. 

B. I, of course, mean by it knowledge. And the 
knowledge on which all civilisation is based consists in 
an acquaintance with the relations which things and 
ideas bear to each other ; in other words, in an ac- 
quaintance with physical and mental laws. 

A. Of course that excludes such c experience ' as 
that of mere barbarous peoples ; or even of such a 



198 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



people as the Egyptians, for instance, according to your 
estimate of them ? 

B. Science, properly so called, the Egyptians had 
none ; and as for their wisdom, it was only considerable 
enough to distinguish them from such barbarous nations 
as the old Hebrews. 

A. How, then, is it that, since a New Eeligion ori- 
ginates in new knowledge, a new, or even a primitive, 
religion, ever arises among a barbarous people who, 
neither before, nor after, are possest of knowledge in 
the one sense in which you desire to use the term, or in 
which, indeed, it can be accurately used ? Or, not to 
press this ; consider the origins of Buddhism, of Chris- 
tianism, and of Islamism. Can it be affirmed that 
Siddhartha and his disciples, Jesus and his dis- 
ciples, Mohammed and his disciples, had any new 
knowledge ; that it was any better acquaintance with 
physical and mental laws that originated the Eeligions 
these great Founders preacht, and their faithful ones 
believed ? Or, not to press even this ; whence came 
that new spirit of inquiry, or of scepticism, as you call 
it, which was surely the cause, rather than the effect 
of the Eevival of Knowledge ? What we know is, 
undoubtedly, of great consequence. But what makes 
us set ourselves to know is surely of equal importance. 
The laws of the accumulation and diffusion of know- 
ledge are markt by great effects. But among these 
we cannot surely count the spirit, the moral agency 
itself, which prompts us to accumulate, and to diffuse, 
knowledge ? And, if we should find that moral agen- 
cies cannot be disregarded in considering the historical 



Chap. 11. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 



phenomena of New Knowledge (through its revival, 
accumulation, diffusion), a fortiori, they cannot be 
disregarded in considering the historical phenomenon 
of a New Eeligion. 

B. If you state all your objections in a criticism of 
my book, I may have a better opportunity of meeting 
them. 

A. Whatever their weight, they are clearly these : 
As to your first argument ; I think that moral forces 
are not adequately represented by moral dogmas ; and 
that, even if these were always the same, they could 
not be accurately called statical forces, or stationary 
agents. As to your second argument ; I think the 
general principle of the distinction between the Indivi- 
dual and the Mass, not only true, but important ; but 
I think that the history, particularly, of Eeligions, 
proves that the moral Wants which, without question, 
effect the greatest changes in the history of men, are 
the causes also of equally great changes in the history 
of Man. And the necessity of considering your third 
argument depends on whether it is found that the 
attempted verification of the two first arguments, by 
an examination of the origin of any New Eeligion, is, 
or not, successful. 

B. Well, I might almost say that I should be glad 
to find the non-effect of moral agencies in historical 
phenomena disproved. But it was not without serious 
consideration that I advanced the theory of their non- 
efficacy as the basis of my work. 

A. Perhaps, with another theory, you would, in the 
present state of science, have been unable to show, so 



200 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt III. 



clearly as you have shown, the immense importance of 
mental laws, and of the progress of knowledge. But 
you, of course, understand that, if I object to your 
making everything dependent on intellectual laws, it is 
not merely in order that I may, myself, make everything 
dependent on moral laws. My general drift is towards 
a theory of Co-existence, which shall reconcile the 
hitherto opposed Schools. For some such theory, I 
cannot doubt, will characterize the New Philosophy. 

B. Well, I think it is about time for lunch ; and 
we shall not probably find a better place for the tent 
than this. 

A. I am quite ready ; for I hardly know whether 
hunger or thirst is the stronger of my co-existent 
appetites. 

I remember that lunch particularly from the con- 
versation which enlivened it, and the numerous 
anecdotes which Mr. Buckle told of certain living 
celebrities. But when the pegs had been drawn ; 
when the luncheon-tent and its belongings had been 
again packed on the camel ; and when we set out on 
our afternoon walk towards our encampment for the 
night by the sea, where the Crusaders had, in 1182, 
besieged the old Saracen castle, the ruins of which still 
crown the cliff of the little island of Kureiyeh, our 
forenoon talk was continued in a discussion on the 
Morality of those Middle Ages, to which I had referred 
in speaking of the origin of the spirit of inqiury or of 
scepticism. Mr. Buckle thought he had me there ; 
and launch t forth, with gusto, on their grossness and 
barbarity. 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 201 

B. Iii my researches on these times, I have made 
such a collection of abominations as, if it were publisht, 
would make one ashamed ever to talk of these well- 
named Dark Ages. But it is so bad that it will have 
to be edited in Latin. 1 Such was the state of things 
before the enlightenment brought by the Eevival of 
Knowledge. 

A. It is, no doubt, an interesting collection, but I 
believe that the fields in which it has been culled are 
to be found either on the further, or the nearer, side 
of the three first centuries of this millennium. For 
these centuries, the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth, it 
appears to me, ought to be separated from all the rest 
of the so-called Middle Ages as a culminating, rather 
than a middle, period ; an epoch of light, rather than of 
darkness. 

B. Well, speaking generally, we may say that it 
was in these very centuries that the Eevival of Know- 
ledge occurred, and that, by the twelfth century, there 
was no nation now called civilised, upon whom the 
light had not begun to dawn. And hence I consider 
this century the great starting-point of Modern Civili- 
sation. 

A. Well, let it be so considered, if you like. Comte 2 
and Le Clerc 3 date our present historical period from 
a later, namely, the fourteenth century ; and that, be- 
cause this century is markt by the decay of the ideal 
element of the Middle Ages, the Catholic Unity, namely, 

1 It has been omitted altogether in his Commonplace-Booh as now 
publisht. 

2 See Philosophic Positive, iv. 

3 See Histoire Litteraire de la France, xxiv. 



202 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



and the Feudal System ; and is, therefore, the first century 
of the great Transition period from the old Christian, 
to the new Humanitarian, Ideal. I would myself 
rather consider the five centuries from the eleventh to 
the fifteenth as a single organic period of growth, 
culmination, and decline, and so reckon the beginning 
of our Present Historical Period from the sixteenth 
century. But whichever view we take, there is no 
dispute as to the facts. So, let that pass. And let me 
say that I think the Middle Ages crucial to your 
theory ; not only because, as I have already remarked, 
it fails to account for that new spirit of inquiry of 
which the Eevival of Knowledge was but the intellec- 
tual aspect ; but because, as the knowledge became 
greater, the morality became less. 

B. How do you make that out ? 

A. Well, in the first place, it will be readily enough 
admitted that knowledge was greater in the fourteenth, 
than in the preceding, centuries. In the fourteenth 
century, a science was created, utterly unknown to the 
greatest of the Greeks, I mean Chemistry ; and, 
though it was, as yet, but an Al-chemistry, it was 
guided by a principle — the Transmutation of Matter, 
which may, I think, be considered as but an earlier 
form of the grandest scientific principle of the present 
century, — the Conservation of Energy. This, then, may 
indicate what the fourteenth century was in its intellec- 
tual aspect. But is its moral aspect, the picture on 
the other leaf of the diptych, of a corresponding 
excellence ? Much the reverse. Compare the Poesy, in 
the widest sense of the term, the Christian Art, and the 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 



203 



Eomantic Literature, of the fourteenth, with that of the 
three preceding, centuries ; and one will be at once 
struck with the degradation of the forms of the Ideal. 1 

B. That may be ; but I do not judge the morality 
of an age by the excellence of its art. 

A. One may, however, I think, much more truly 
estimate the morality of an age by the character of its 
ideals, than by a catalogue of its abominations. And 
if you make the Eevival of Learning in the fourteenth 
century the starting-point of Modem Civilisation, I say 
that, antecedent thereto, and contemporary therewith, 
there was an upburst of Poesy which was the moral 
cause and co-existent of that Eevival of Learning. 
For the eleventh and twelfth centimes is the period 
of those Eomantic Tales of the Celtic Eaces which, 
caught-up by the Norman Trouveres, the Provencal 
Troubadours, 2 and the German Minnesangers, was 
wrought into the vast and glorious Arthurian Eomance- 
Cycle. And that Poesy was, from its distinguishing 
characteristics, well worthy of being the antecedent and 

1 ' Le quatorzieme siecle voit fmir et s'eteindre l'art, po6sie, et 
architecture cre£ 'dans la haute epoque (xi me et xii me siecles).' — Le Clerc 
et Renan, Hisf.oire Litteraire de France, t. v. p. 391. ' Schon zuru Ysaie 
•wurde beinerlrt, wie Rohheit, Plumpheit und Sinnlichkeit seit deui 
Ende des vierzeJmten Jakrlmnderts iiberhand genoramen batten, und 
welch ein Abstand sichtbar ist von deni Zarten, Treufuhlenden und 
Adeligen der Liebe bey Frauendienst und Frauengenuss in zwblften 
Jahrhundert.' — Schmidt, Romane von der Tafelrunde. Wiener Jahr- 
biicher, bd. xxix. (1825), p. 106. 1 Isaie-le-Triste nous paroit n'avoir pas 
ete* ecrit qu'a la fin du quatorzieme, ou au commencement du quiuzieme 
siecle. Le Fran5ois en est moin3 difficile a entendre que celui de 
Tristan, mais aussi est il moins energique. . . . Le monde avoit 
effectivement bien empire' pendant ces trois siecles.' — Bibliotlieque des 
Romans, Mai — Juin, 1776, t. i. pp. 58-60. 

3 More correctly trobador, derived from the langue d'oc verb trobar, 
as trouvere similarly is from the langue d'oil trouver. 



204 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



co-existent of the Eevival of Knowledge. For, what 
more worthy to be both the forerunner, and the mate, 
of a 6 New Spirit of Inquiry,' than a Poesy, in which 
Love is the supreme principle of morality ; in which 
Adventure, the Search of the Unknown, is the business 
of life ; and in which the Marvellous is, — not Miracle, 
or Supernatural Interference, — but the wonderfulness 
of Nature itself. That these, the first, especially, are 
really the distinguishing characteristics of Celtic Poesy, 
will be evident on comparing it, either with that of the 
Classic Age, or with that of the Teutonic Pace. Com- 
pare the position of women and. the character of love 
in the Caiiovingian and. in the Arthurian Romances. 
Compare especially Guinevere and Yseult with those 
' Scandinavian furies,' as Penan calls them, 1 Guclruna 
and Chriemhild. Compare the revengeful heroes of 
the Edda and Mbelung with the nobler-tempered 
knights of the Table Pounde. Consider the sympathy 
with Nature, and the sense of its magic, in the picture of 
the forest-life of Merlin the Wild ; and even in such 
appellations as these ; Knight of the Lion, Knight of 
the Falcon, Knight of the Swan. And Merlin espe- 
cially consider, in legend, and in lay, in myth 
and romance. Surely we must have regard to the 
profounder moral forces of our nature, if we would 
account for that wonderful historical creation and its 
effects. And though Yillemarque's authority is ques- 
tionable enough on certain points, I think that what 
he says, in rather a fine sentence about Merlin, is of 
unquestionable truth : 6 la plus ancienne tradition ro- 

1 Renan, Poesie des Races Celtiqaes, in Essais de Moral et de Critique. 



Chap. EL THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 205 

manesque a personnifie et idealise en lui le devouement 
passionne a tout ce que la grande epoque chevaler- 
esque jugeait digne de son respect, je veux dire, la 
religion, la patrie, la royaute, l'amour ; Famour pur, 
discret, delicat ; la solitude a deux, eternellement 
enchantee.' 1 

But we had by this time reached our tents, already 
pitched where Eainald of Chatillon and his crusading 
knights, who had, like myself, rejoiced in the Eomances 
of Merlin, of Launcelot, and of the San Greal, had en- 
camped before us. 

One was carried back to the close of the twelfth 
century, the glorious culminating epoch of the Middle 
Ages, — or, as I should rather say, of the Catholic 
Feudal Period (eleventh to the fifteenth century), of 
that Modern Age which commenced with the Sixth 
Century B.C. — the epoch of Abelard and that Christian 
philosophy of Scholasticism, which, finally refuting itself 
in the conclusion that the same thing may be at once 
true to dogma and false to reason, began the philoso- 
phical emancipation of Europe : the epoch, in Britain, 
of William the Lion, and Eichard the Lion-heart ; 
on the continent of Europe, of Clement the Third, 
Frederick Barbarossa, and Philip Augustus ; and in the 
East, of Manuel the First and Salah-ed-Deen : the 
epoch of the Third Crusade, the most romantic of all, 
the last of which Palestine was the scene, but the first, 
in which, emancipated in some degree, at length, from 
the ignorant and cruel fanaticism of Christian supersti- 
tion, men were inspired rather by the strains of minne- 

1 VEnchanteur Merlin, p. 234. 



206 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



sangers, trouveres, and troubadours, than by the rhap- 
sodies of hermits and the impostures of monks — and 
if, therefore, they now fought, not for the Galilsean 
Faith, but for honour ; nor for the crown of mar- 
tyrdom, but for the favour of their ladies fair ; it was, 
at least, not as merciless fanatics that they fought, 
but as soldiers, vieing with their foes no less in 
magnanimity and courtesy than in dauntless valour. 

The emancipation- of Europe from the base yoke 
of ignorant, or enforced, belief in those Yahveh- 
legends and Osiris-myths which constitute Christian 
Orthodoxy, was then beginning ; but it is now seven 
hundred years since ; and Europeans still pretend, at 
least, belief in these Oriental fictions, and the priesthood, 
sworn to their defence, still find it pay. 

Section II. — The Definition of the Ethical 
Standakd. 

The next morning and forenoon we continued our 
discussion, journeying, from the Crusaders' encamp- 
ment, round the head of the Gulf to the Palm-grove 
of Akaba. 

A. It seems to me that one's bad opinion of the 
Middle Ages, as compared with our own epoch of 
enlightenment and civilisation, must depend on some- 
what materialistic notions of the causes, and the tests of 
Morality. And thus, the general question we have 
already discussed with reference to Method and Art, 
namely, How are the inward and outward, ideal and 
formal, moral and intellectual, elements to be regarded 
in their relation to each other,— occurs in a new form. 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 207 

B. I am not sure that I quite follow you. But as 
to the causes of Morality, I think there can be no doubt 
that they are knowledge, wealth, and health. 

A. Exactly : that is to say, outward conditions, and 
not ideal forces. And so, if a man gets ill, and ill-off, 
he should comfort himself with reflecting, not on the 
elevating, but on the degrading, influences of affliction ? 

B. Well, I made at one time special inquiries with 
the view of testing the theological dogma you allude 
to ; and the evidence I collected proved that, in the vast 
majority of cases, bodily diseases and worldly reverses 
only sour the temper, and degrade the morals. 

A. I fear that I must in great measure yield this 
point, at least, to you. And the conviction that it is as 
you say, even in many, if not in most, cases, makes the 
tragic aspect of the world all the darker. The wind is 
not tempered to the shorn lamb. It blows on all the 
flock alike. The strong are the better for it. The 
weak become, what, in Scotland, we call braxy, as they 
fall on the bleak hillside. 

B. And as to the effect of wealth on Morality, 
compare the rich and the poor. There is, unques- 
tionably, more morality in the upper than in the 
lower classes. 

A. That depends on your idea of Morality. 

B. I test and measure Morality by the justness of 
men's dealings with each other, and their non-abuse 
of power over women, children, and dependents. 

A. Well, so to limit the meaning of the term 
Morality may be perfectly justifiable, or, indeed, ne- 
cessary in certain scientific applications. But with 



208 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



reference to the characterization of an individual, or of 
an age, it appears to me that it shuts out the indispen- 
sable consideration of the general moral feeling or 
tone. 

B. But do you make the distinction between the 
merit, and the value, of an act ? 

A. Certainly. The one refers to motive, the other 
to effect. But, making that distinction, I do not think 
that even the value, or outward elevating effect of an 
irreproachably moral life, according to your test, need 
be so great as that of, according to the same test, an 
immoral life. I mean, for instance, that one generous 
act may not only have greater merit, but more value 
than a hundred merely correct acts ; and may, by a 
touch of that sympathy, which makes the whole world 
kin, outweigh many other acts which, by a merely out- 
ward test, may appear immoral. For the Standard of 
what is fair, what is a right use of power varies. 

B. No doubt. But I take the Standard of the 
highest class. 

A. But that seems to me unfair to the lowest class ; 
so our Standard of Fairness differs. You understand, 
however, that I do not in the least object to the appli- 
cation of such a standard of Morality as you propose 
to measure the outward civilisation of a nation, or the 
outward propriety of a man. But what I object to is 
the application of such an outward standard to measure 
inward character. For this is, in fact, what is done, 
when moral epithets are applied, which undoubtedly 
refer rather to inward motive than to outward effect. 
By such a Standard you may, indeed, rightly, form a 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 200 

merely outward point of view, set the respectable house- 
holder above the irregular enthusiast, the rich above 
the poor, and our own age above the very best period 
of the ' dark ' Ages, or of 4 barbarous ' old Borne ; but 
you cannot judge inward worth merely by outward act. 

B. I do not see, how else one is to judge either an 
individual, a class, or an age, if one's judgment is to 
have any real value. 

A. You judge, then, Morality only by Works. 
And it seems to me that one can form but a onesided, 
and indeed false, opinion of the character either of an 
individual, or of an age, if one catalogues only Works, 
without a sympathetic insight into Faith. So that, if 
we were Theologians, you would be an Arminian, and 
I, like most Scotsmen, as opposed to Englishmen, a 
Calvinist. For, though it is long since I got out of 
that particular Belief, or form of Faith, which I was 
brought up to think should accompany Works ; I am 
no less firmly persuaded than ever, not only that Works 
without Faith, some Ideal, some Belief, are naught and 
worthless ; but that insight into the inward elements of 
an act, its aim, motive, idea, faith, will frequently make 
all the difference between the epithets base and heroic. 

B. But how, save from his acts, are we to tell what 
a man's aim or idea was ? There is hardly an eminent 
man in history who has not had the most opposite aims 
and ideas attributed to him. And as to what people 
say of themselves ; we must judge their speech by their 
acts, and not their acts by their speech. Take, for in- 
stance, the Poets. With all their fine sayings, they 
have been generally the most immoral of mankind. 

p 



210 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pabt III. 



A. That I cannot admit. They may not have con- 
formed to the conventional, Christian, and unnatural 
law of sexual relations. But as to the essentials of 
morality — truth, love, and duty, — I believe that even 
Burns and Byron themselves stood infinitely higher 
than the great majority of their respectable accusers. 
Still, I acknowledge so far the force of all you say. 
But I think that, until this difficulty in rightly judging 
the inward, or ideal, elements of outward acts is over- 
come, the Science of History will be but in the most 
rudimentary stage. And, to speak of historical charac- 
ters as, by your Method, you are logically necessitated 
to speak, appears, if I may express myself frankly, to 
demonstrate its insufficiency. 

B. To what do you allude ? 

A. To speaking, for instance, of Alexander, Cassar, 
and Napoleon as ' gigantic criminals ; ' of our ances- 
tors generally as ' wretched ' because £ ignorant ' beings ; 
and of my ancestors particularly as ' thieves and mur- 
derers,' (thus manacling them with the basest inmates 
of Newgate), or as ' tyrants and torturers, dead to 
vjv^rv emotion of pity and of tenderness.' 

B. Well, with regard to your countrymen, I may, 
possibly, have written intolerantly of intolerance and 
lawlessness. But I have seen no disproof of the facts 
by which I supported what I said. 

A. It is not necessary for my argument to dispute 
them. But, with all my gratitude for the generosity 
of your appreciation of the intellectual history of Scot- 
land, the moral judgments you express, and results at 
which you arrive, with respect to its religious history, 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 211 

seem to me to prove the necessity to the historian of 
sympathy as well as knowledge. 

B. I confess that I had very little sympathy with 
men, the study of whose acts and writings was the 
most painful literary task I ever undertook. 

A. I don't wonder at it. For I can perfectly un- 
derstand how, in many cases, the very liberality and 
generosity of a man may make it impossible for him to 
see that, even in these lawless Highlanders, and tyran- 
nical Covenanters, this wonderful human nature of 
ours can justify itself. But still, I think that such 
sympathetic insight is necessary to the historian. 

B. Well, I will agree with you that it may be an 
advantage. But there is this disadvantage, such sym- 
pathy will, except in the rarest cases, weaken what I 
consider far more important to the historian — his ana- 
lytic power. 

A. That will, I think, depend on whether it is a 
sympathy which can justify itself only by a so-called 
poetical or romantic misrepresentation of facts, or a 
sympathy which, guided and corrected by an Ethical 
Standard, founded on a metaphysical (or psychological) 
principle reconciliative of Idealism and Materialism, 
takes, and without detriment to its exercise, can take a 
complete view of facts. 

B. But how is such a Standard to be defined ? 

A. That I do not yet clearly see. This, however, 
seems evident, that, unless a theory, I will not say of 
innate principles, but of spontaneous, and yet con- 
ditioned, wants or tendencies can be established ; then, 
one's historical Method must be materialistic; and 

p 2 



212 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Past III. 



hence the ideal element in Art will logically be con- 
sidered secondary ; logically also, Eeligion be accounted 
for as dependent solely on outward, physical or intel- 
lectual conditions ; and by outward acts only, and their 
consequences, Character will logically be judged. But 
now, how would you define the Ethical Standard or 
Highest Good ? 

B. I would define the Summum Bonuni as the 
highest intellectual and sensual gratification consistent 
with the rights of others. 

A. The Highest Good I would name Love ; but 
that, as objective harmony, as well as subjective 
affection. 

B. I think my definition is more scientific and 
accurate. 

A. It seems to me to express a radically different 
view. 

B. How so ? 

A. Why, to state it abstractly, you seem to place 
the Summum Bonuni in the harmonious exercise and 
gratification of an individual's own various capacities 
and desires, in a word, in the oneness of the individual 
with himself ; while I would place the Highest Good 
in the oneness of the individual with others, as himself 
a part of a greater whole, or related to another being, 
as, for instance, God, or Humanity. 

B. Well, but I still think that my definition in- 
cludes yours. For that 4 oneness-with-others ' may, 
I suppose, be regarded as a higher sort of intellectual 
gratification ? 

A. By no means as but a 4 higher sort of intel 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 218 

lectual gratification' would I regard oncness-with- 
o there. And I shall, perhaps, more clearly express 
what seems to me to be the difference between us by 
saying that others, or, more generally, something out 
of, and above the individual, is an essential term in my 
definition, while, in yours, it would appear to be but 
accidental. 

B. I am not quite prepared to admit that. 

A. But consider the tendencies of our two different 
views of the Highest Good. Would not the logical con- 
sequence, at least, of my view, be devoted self-sacrifice ; 
and of yours, enlightened selfishness ? Of course, as a 
matter of fact, a man who took my view might be 
far more selfish than one who was of your opinion. 
For, no doubt, there is no irony in the world like the 
mockery of principles by practice. But still, would it 
not be possible for a man faithfully to guide his life by 
your idea of the Summum Bonum, and yet be, in his 
perfect complacency, one of the most selfish and hateful 
of mankind ? 

B. I think not. You seem to forget that I have 
said 6 the highest gratification consistent with the rights 
of others/ 

A. No ; I keep that in mind. But who or Avhat 
is to decide that the gratification of any given desire a 
man may have, is, or is not, consistent with the rights 
of others ? 

B. No one, certainly, but the man himself ; except 
the act were such as to be taken cognisance of rather 
by law than by morals. 

A. But here is the difficulty; the difficulty, indeed, 



214 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



which made me abandon the Summum Bonum of your 
School ; though, for a time, in the overclouding of 
heavenly Ideals, it seemed a sufficient earthly beacon. 
This namely : that, as you say, it leaves a man unaided 
to judge for himself of the consistency of his acts with 
the rights of others ; and there can, I think, be no 
doubt that, if not in the case of the untempted philo- 
sopher, certainly in the case of the ordinary man of the 
world, one's notions of the rights of others, and of what 
may be for the good of others, are apt to get very dull 
and coarse, if one considers their rights and their hap- 
piness only as the limits of one's own. One becomes 
thus, in fact, the judge in one's own cause, and that is 
not justice. 

B. There is, perhaps, some truth in that. 

A. There seems to me to be such an amount of 
truth in it as to demonstrate the necessity of a con- 
ception of something out of, and higher than oneself, 
whereby to keep any one, with stuff of passion in him, 
from utter corruption ; the moral necessity, that is, of 
an Ideal, and hence a Eeligion. For suppose a man, 
inclined to sensual indulgence, unlimited by pecuniary 
considerations, and limited only by what he might 
consider the rights or happiness of others? Where 
would he stop ? In the course of a few years would 
not such epithets as degraded, corrupted, unnatural, 
probably be honestly resented as utterly inapplicable to 
practices, which he may himself at one time so have 

qualified ? For instance, * * * * 

* * * * * * * 
* * * * * * 

* * ***** 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 215 

A. As to that I cannot agree with you. But, to 
return to the main argument, I think the objection I 
have stated must be admitted as, at least, a difficulty 
in the way of accepting your Summum Bonum. 

B. No doubt there is some such difficulty in con- 
nection with it. But I do not think that your defini- 
tion is clear of more serious objections. Indeed I am 
not sure if I quite understand your meaning. 

A. I mean by my definition of the Highest Good to 
say this : that I think that, to prompt men to, and to 
confirm them in noble action, men need to have some- 
thing out of themselves to reverence, and to be guided 
by ; that, in a word, men need some 4 living faith,' 
which, whatever may be its form, shall be to them what 
the most venerable text of the Indian Scriptures speaks 
of as 6 that divine and incomparably greater light than 
the material sun which illumines all, delights all, from 
which all proceed, to which all must return, and which 
alone can irradiate, not our visual organs merely, but 
our souls and our intellects ; ' and further, by my defi- 
nition of the Highest Good, I mean that Blessedness, 
Gottseligkeit as distinguished from Gl'ucJcseliglceit, or 
Happiness, which is to be found only, as I think, in 
harmony with something out of oneself — another, or 
others, God, or the Universe, and that, even if the 
consciousness of such oneness should have to be pur- 
chased by the sacrifice, by the death even, of the in- 
dividual. 

B. But all the most mischievous fanatics and so- 
called heroes, the world has ever seen, the men who 
have shown the greatest disregard of the rights of 

o O C 



216 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



others, and who have caused the greatest misery to 
mankind, have declared that they were guided by, and 
may, indeed, sometimes, have even sacrificed them- 
selves to what you would call their Ideal. Think of 
Abraham preparing himself to kill his only son, as a 
sacrifice to his God, and only stopped at the last moment 
by some illusion, probably caused by the revolt of his 
own better feelings. Think of the whole history of 
the Jews. Does it make their crimes any the less 
atrocious that their prophets declared, and their leaders 
believed, that they were obeying the behests of God? 
I trow not. It seems to me that such declarations 
and belief only added blasphemy against God to their 
crimes against their fellow-creatures. Or consider the 
history of religious Persecution. There can be no 
doubt that an overwhelming majority of religious per- 
secutors have, in their very worst crimes, conscien- 
tiously believed themselves to be — to use your language 
— guided by, and in harmony with an ideal of some- 
thing out of, and above themselves. And yet it is, 
in fact, by weakening their faith that you check their 
crimes. 

A. But all you urge seems to me to be of force, 
not against my argument for the necessity of an ob- 
jective Ideal, but only against certain forms of such an 
Ideal. In one sense, at least, I admit all you say 
against fanatics, and those whom you so little respect 
as heroes. And I believe that I am as fully persuaded 
as yourself of the present importance of the increase 
and spread of knowledge. But here is the perpetual 
difference between us. You look chiefly to the intel- 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 217 

lectual, or formal side of our nature ; I attach equal 
importance to its moral or ideal forces. Hence know- 
ledge seems to me, not an end, but a means ; the 
means, namely, of giving a new and higher form to 
that Ideal, harmony with which, in some form or other, 
is the Highest Good. Hence also, feeling that my 
views differ in form rather than in substance from those 
even of fanatical believers in past, and in present, creeds, 
I see, in what you would call their atrocities, rather 
heroic faith than pernicious crime. And hence, my 
aim in attempting to define the Summum Bonum was 
to express the general condition of finding peace and 
blessedness, whatever might be the believer's creed, or, 
in other words, whatever might be his country and age, 
and what the state soever of his knowledge. 

B. Then our definitions differed because we had 
different objects in view. 

A. Well, if your object in defining the Summum 
Bonum was simply to state the outward conditions 
within which the happiness of an individual ought to 
be realised, I entirely agree with you. And, no doubt, 
on the failure of belief in supernatural moral rules, 
the natural rule of consistency with the rights of 
others, or with the good of the greatest number, is 
most important. And they deserve well of their fellow- 
men who point-out, not only the new freedom granted, 
but the limits imposed by such a natural moral law. 
So far, as usual, we thoroughly agree. But I further 
think that the true solution of this, as of all other 
philosophical problems, lies in the combination of the 
materialist and idealist solutions, which, as hitherto 



218 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



given, seem to nie to have been partial, onesided, and 
therefore approximate only. 

B. It is more easy to speak of the desirability of 
such a combination than to effect it. 

A. No one, I think, can be more sensible of that 
than I am. But now, for instance, I will agree with 
yon that 6 the highest intellectual and sensual gratifica- 
tion consistent with the rights of others,' is a charac- 
teristic of the Summum Bonum. Yet, I still think 
also, with the Idealist, that self should not be the 
aim ; and that, indeed, an action is subjectively moral, 
only in so far as its ultimate aim, at least, is not the 
good or glory of oneself, but of others, or another. 
I will further agree with you as to the mischievousness, 
very often, at least, of those who do thus have an aim 
beyond their own individual good or glory. And so, 
attempting to combine the views of the Summum 
Bonum characteristic of Idealists and Materialists, and 
to give more scientific form to what I meant to ex- 
press when I called Love the Highest Good, I would 
define the Summum Bonum as a. Will having as its 
aim self-oneness, in order to, and resulting in, oneness 
with others, and the oneness of each with all. 

B. ' Having as its aim self-oneness ? ' 

A. What I mean, or want to express, is the Gothean 
idea of self-culture — of a many-sided, complete, and 
harmonious self- development, — only this, not for its 
own sake, or for the sake of one's own individual 
happiness or satisfaction ; but with one's thoughts 
fixed rather on attaining thereby oneness with others, 
and their love ; and in such a way as to contribute 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 219 

something to the realisation of that oneness of men 
with each other which is surely the ideal of human 
existence. 

B. Well, that is somewhat more clearly expressed. 

A. But this can, as yet, be put forward merely as 
my ideal, ethical standard, or Summum Bonum, and 
yours, or another's, may, so far as yet appears, be as 
good or better. For no idea or opinion can rightly 
claim to be true except in so far as it is in accordance 
with some Objective Authority. Hence, the immense 
importance that I attach to the discovery of an Ulti- 
mate Law of History. For in such a Law there would 
again be an accepted Objective Authority by which to 
judge of opinions and ideals. Again. For the Au- 
thority popularly appealed to among all civilised peoples, 
since their customs and traditions were committed to 
writing in the more or less changed shape of laws and 
legends, has been some Sacred Book, or other. And 
the discovery of an Ultimate Law of History would 
be the completion of that new Objective Authority and 
Sanction given by Science in the generalisation of the 
later and larger results of human experience. 

But we now became aware of the beautiful Palm- 
grove, whither we were bound. On our left, it rose 
within a few feet, or yards, of the calm and glittering 
sea. It was the Arabian noon. We had, during the 
latter part of our journey, along the track of the 
Mecca pilgrims, been on foot. And grateful was the 
repose offered by our tents, already pitched, and — like 
those of the three other parties, who had pushed on 
quicker than we, — half-hid among the palms. 



220 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



Section III. — The Quest of a Law of History. 

Here, at Akaba, the Tuwarah had to leave us, and 
we had to arrange, if possible, with the Alawin Arabs 
about getting to Petra. So, parliaments of Easterns 
and Westerns, intrigues of Sheykhs, jealousies of Drago- 
men, gossip and backbiting, civilised for all our week 
there the Palm-grove by the Sea. And there was 
only one noteworthy adventure : when two of us re- 
turning from the neighbouring plateau of Et-Tih, 
mounted on dromedaries, and armed with revolvers, 
came down on a marauding party of Arabs who were 
driving away half-a-dozen of our camels. 

As to Mr. Buckle and myself, it seemed to us that 
the chances were that public affairs would ultimately get 
arranged of themselves, so we took but little part in 
them, and went on with our discussions. Once or 
twice, indeed, our philosophic calm was somewhat 
disturbed when a meeting with the Sheykhs of the 
Alawin had ended stormily, and there seemed no hope 
of so arranging affairs as to get on to Petra. For the 
country, after a long war, of which Petra and the pas- 
tures of Mount Seir had been the prize, had just been 
conquered by a new tribe, and the entrance of travel- 
lers raised so many points of honour about the division 
of the baksheesh-spoil, that swords were more than 
once drawn with the intention of killing each other 
instead of plundering us. However, they thought 
better of it. And there was for me such a splendour 
and serenity here in the aspects of Nature that I could 
not worry myself even about getting on to Petra. 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 221 

So we continued our discussions, strolling on the 
beach, or for a little way along the road to Mecca. 
And as the recreation of the afternoon, every day I 
bathed. Mr. Buckle, indeed, continued to protest 
against it as dangerous, on account of sharks. But, 
sharks or not, I was unable to resist the glance of the 
Sirens of the Sea. Yes, the Sirens ! For one under- 
stands something of the profound expressiveness of the 
old myth when, feeling beyond utterance, the fascina- 
tion of Nature, one leaps into, and lies, under the 
splendour of Heaven, in the soft-enfolding arms of the 
brightly-treacherous Sea. 

B. Doubtless an Ultimate Law of History would 
be a new objective principle of Authority, or new 
Sanction. But how is it to be discovered ? 

A. I can only say how I myself have attempted to 
discover it. 

B. Well then, how ? 

A. I had, of course, while reading them, been 
borne-away by the modern Philosophies of History ; 
but I became, on reflection, convinced of their inade- 
quacy ; and hence, of the necessity of a new attempt at 
discovering the Law of History. Brought-up also as I 
had been (and as, if I was to be brought-up a Christian 
at all, I reckon it good fortune to have been), in belief 
of the admirably logical system of Calvinism ; it be- 
came clear to me that, as Christianism is, in fact, a 
Creed or Ideal founded on a Philosophy of History ; 
the completion and establishment of the New Philo- 
sophy of History would be, in effect, the basis of a 
New Creed or Ideal. And hence, as thus, and thus 



222 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



only, an end could be put to our present intellectual, 
moral, and social anarchy ; even more than the philo- 
sophical, I felt the religious, necessity of the discovery 
of an Ultimate Law of History. 

B. But these are only the preliminaries. How did 
you set about the discovery ? 

A. My first step was an inductive inquiry into the 
meaning of Law, the meaning, that is, of Causation. 
In other words, I endeavoured first of all to clear up 
my notions of Causation by inquiring into what the 
causes of the simplest phenomena — those, namely, of 
ordinary mechanical motion — actually are. The cause, 
or 6 invariable antecedent,' of an ordinary mechanical 
change, or motion, I found unquestionably to be a 
Differential Relation between Co-existent Pressures. But 
if so, then, those, motions which we attribute to 4 attrac- 
tions ' would appear to be due to causes of an utterly 
different kind from those of ordinary motions. One's 
persuasion that, as Aristotle so finely said, ovk eotKe §' f) 
(jivcrLS eTietcroStwSr;? ovcra Ik tcov (jyaivofxevcop, Scrwep 
fioyOrjpa rpaycoSia — 4 Nature is not episodic in its phe- 
nomena, like a bad tragedy '—forbad such a supposi- 
tion. It became, therefore, my effort to show that all 
' attractions,' gravic, electric, and chemic, are, like ordi- 
nary motions, due to differential relations of pressure. 
This, however, it was soon evident could not be done 
without a new conception of Atoms, or the Parts of 
Matter, whether ultimate or not. Atoms, then, I was 
led to define as Mutually determining Centres of Pres- 
sure. And testing this conception by what must be 
the test of all physical conceptions, the principle, 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 223 

namely, of the Conservation of Energy, or of the 
Equivalence of Transformation, I endeavoured to show 
that, with this principle my proposed new conception 
of Atoms is, while the current conception is not, in 
accordance. 

B. Have you published anything of this ? 

A. Yes ; in some papers in the ' Philosophical Maga- 
zine ' on the 6 Principles of the Science of Motion.' 

B. I should like to see them. 

A. I have a copy of the first of them with me 
here, if you care to look at it. Only, if you should 
do me the honour to read it, pray remember that no 
one can be more conscious than I am of its extreme 
inadequacy. Yet I, of course, think there is some- 
thing in these principles as statements of the concrete 
physical, as distinguished from the abstract mathe- 
matical, Laws of Motion, and in that conception of 
Atoms through which I endeavour to assimilate the 
causes of so-called 4 attractions ' with those of ordinary 
motions. 

B. The conception of them as P How did 

you define them ? 

A. Possibly I may make my meaning clearest in 
this way. You know that, according to current no- 
tions there are really two kinds of Matter — little hard 
particles, and an imponderable elastic ether. Now, 
instead of this notion of little hard bodies in an ether, 
suppose the ether made up of lines of force, or lines 
of pressure from these bodies, conceived now as centres 
of pressure, and let these lines be mutually deflectable. 

B. That is so far clear. 



224 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



A, Well, then, my fundamental reason for ad- 
vancing this conception is, that by such a concep- 
tion, and by such a conception only, is the primitive 
Cause of Motion placed in the System itself of Matter. 
The necessity of such a conception of Matter as does 
place the primitive cause of motion in the system 
itself of Matter, independent of all divine or other 
impulses from without, lies in this, that, by such a 
conception of primitive mutual determination of parts, 
and by such a conception only, are one's ultimate phy- 
sical conceptions brought into accordance with the 
principle of Conservation. And the advantage of this 
conception of Atoms as mutually determining Centres 
of Pressure is, that by this means, and, accordantly 
with the principle of Conservation, by this means 
only, can those motions ordinarily attributed to 4 forces 
of attraction ' be shown to be explicable as, like all 
other motions, due simply to differential relations of 
pressure.. 

B. Well, I shall read your paper on the subject. 
But, in the meantime, I don't quite see the bearing of 
ail this on the discovery of the Ultimate Law of 
History. 

A. But you will admit that there can be no hope 
of discovering such a Law except we can gain some 
notion of what events, and the chief events of all, in- 
tellectual discoveries, are driving at — some notion, in 
other words, of what the intellectual outcome will U, 
of human development ? 

B. No doubt the Intellectual Laws are the main 
things. But I thought you disputed this ? 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 225 



A. JSTo. I only maintain that Moral Wants under- 
lie the manifestations of Thought. But not to diverge 
on this, you will admit that, in order to have a first ap- 
proximation, at least, to the discovery of whatever 
reason or law there has been in Man's history, we must 
gain some notion of what the most important of his 
ultimate intellectual conceptions is likely to be, or, 
more definitely, of what his ultimate conception of 
Causation is likely to be ? 

B. That, surely, we have already. For the whole 
scope and tendency of modern thought force upon our 
minds conceptions of regularity and of law. And so 
surely as the human mind advances, will men cease to 
be terrified by those interfering phantoms which but 
their ignorance has conceived. 

A. No doubt. But in studying the controversy 
of those days between Theology and Science, I came, 
and reasonably, I think, to the conclusion that our. 
conceptions of Law (and hence, of course, also of its 
antithesis, Miracle) were by no means as yet suffi- 
ciently clear to make a really scientific definition pos- 
sible of Man's ultimate conception of Causation. And 
hence it was that, as a first step towards the discovery 
of the Law of Human Development, I endeavoured to 
clear my conceptions of Causation in an inquiry into 
the physical causes of the simplest class of phenomena, 
those, namely, of motion, studying at the same time, 
applying, and developing that great principle of the 
Conservation of Energy which certainly applies to 
every class of phenomena whatever. 

B. And what lias been the result ? 

Q 



226 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



A. The result has been the definition of the con- 
ception of Law, or of the scientific conception of Cau- 
sation, as the conception, not merely of Uniformity of 
Sequence, but also of Mutuality of Co-existence, or 
Mutual Determination. 

B. You must expect to have that received with a 
good deal of questioning. 

A. Well, without entering at present into a meta- 
physical discussion of Causation, let me simply endea- 
vour to make clear what I thus acid to the ordinary 
conception of it. I do nothing more than merely ge- 
neralise the invariable antecedent of changes, and de- 
fine its nature. And I say that modern experimental 
research, and its great generalisation, the principle of 
Conservation, require us to conceive the Cause, or in- 
variable antecedent, of a change as a Differential Eela- 
tion between Co-exi stents. 

B, One would need some illustration of such a 
conception, to be sure of your meaning. 

A. Take, then, as an illustration, its bearing on 
the notion of what Mill calls ' Permanent Causes,' such 
as he supposes the sun to be. I say that the principle 
of Conservation sweeps away every notion of such a 
thing as a ' Permanent Cause,' — a thing that produces 
change without being itself equivalently changed. And 
I maintain that, if Effects are to be conceived, as the 
principle of Conservation requires that they should be 
conceived, namely, as Equivalent Transformations ; 
then, Causes must be conceived as Differential Eelations. 

B. It may be, as you say, as to ' Permanent Causes.' 
A. Or again, let me illustrate this conception of Law, 



Chap. II. THE SHQJRE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 



227 



by the conception it gives of Miracle. If Law is to 
be defined as implying the conception of a Cause, not 
as an agent, self-subsisting and unchanged, whatever 
the change it produces ; but as a relation of reciprocal 
action, the change arising from which is marked by an 
equivalence of loss and gain ; then, a Miracle must be 
defined as an event between which and its antecedent 
conditions there is no equivalence of transformed energy. 
And I think that it is only by the introduction of such 
a definition of Miracle that clearness is to be given to 
the controversy on the subject — such clearness as will 
stop it altogether, and rid us of it for ever. 

B. The present definitions are, no doubt, as vague 
as they are varying. 

A. But to give yet another illustration of the mean- 
ing and necessity, as I think, of complementing the 
ordinary conception of Law and of Causation, by that 
of Mutual Determination. Only thus is the notion of 
Uniformity of Sequence itself to be rightly appre- 
hended. For, as a matter of fact, there is no Unifor- 
mity of Sequence in Nature, except in a sense which 
the conception of cause, implied in that of Mutual De- 
termination, alone, as I think, adequately defines. 

B. I fear you only misapprehend the scientific con- 
ception of Uniformity. What is meant by it is, not that 
events are marked by uniformity of character, but by 
uniformity of connexion with an antecedent. The 
doctrine of Uniform Sequence is but the doctrine that 
certain events having already happened, certain other 
events corresponding to them will also happen. Hence, 
it by no means implies even uniformity in the potency 

q 2 



228 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



of agencies. The supposition that volcanic agencies, 
for instance, were formerly more potent than they are 
now, is by no means inconsistent with the scientific 
doctrine of Uniformity. It is one thing to assert the 
uniformity of natural laws ; it is quite another thing to 
assert the uniformity of natural causes. And heat, 
therefore, may have produced far greater effects than 
it can do at present, and yet the laws of Nature be un- 
changed, and the order and sequence of events un- 
broken. It is enough that the aggregate of force be 
conceived as remaining unimpaired ; and it is by no 
means required that each force be believed to have 
always been equally powerful. Deviation, indeed, the 
great Hunter said, is one of the chief principles or 
laws of Nature. But to generalise such irregularities, 
or, in other words, to show that they are not irregu- 
larities at all, was the main object of his life, and 
the noblest part of his mission. And the scientific 
conception of Uniformity, therefore, is entirely misun- 
derstood, if it is imagined that extraordinary pheno- 
mena are a disproof of it, or a proof of anything else 
than merely of our imperfect apprehension, or rather, 
of that backwardness of our knowledge which pre- 
vents us from discerning the symmetry of the universal 
scheme. 

A. I entirely agree with every word you have 
said ; and do not myself, I hope, at all misapprehend 
what scientific writers mean by the Uniformity of 
Nature. But you must allow, I think, that this doc- 
trine is, in fact, very widely misunderstood. And all 
I say is that, at once, completeness, and greater clear- 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 229 

ness would be given to the conception of Law, or the 
scientific conception of Causation, by defining it, not 
merely as the conception of Uniformity of Sequence, 
but as that also of Mutuality of Co-existence, or Mu- 
tual Determination. 

B. I clo not follow you, I confess. 

A. But suppose Law defined simply as Uniformity 
of Sequence, have not the miracle-arguers really some 
show of reason when, — pointing out that, in the first 
appearance of Life on the Earth, and in many immense, 
though minor new phenomena since then, there has 
been anything but Uniformity of Sequence, — they ask 
why we should not also admit such non-uniformities as 
a virgin's conception of a boy, and the resurrection 
from the dead of that boy after he had become a man, 
and expired as a martyr ? 

B. Such an argument can have a show of reason 
only to those who as entirely misapprehend the doc- 
trine of Uniformity as those who would thus misre- 
present it. 

A. That may be. But still — 

B. The Uniformity of Sequence meant by Science 
is simply that which arises from all phenomena being 
determined solely by their antecedents. And all ante- 
cedents are either in the mind of Man, or in the ex- 
ternal phenomena of what is called Nature. 

A. Exactly. But that is just what I think should 
be more explicitly stated in our definition of Law. 

B. Well, how, with your principle of Mutual Deter- 
mination, would you reply to those who use such an 
argument as that to which you have alluded ? 



230 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



A. I should say that I not only do not believe in 
the uniformity of Nature in the way they imagine I 
do ; but that I have a quite contrary belief ; and that 
what I do not believe is only that the cause of what 
they would call a non-uniformity is such as they would 
conceive it. For they conceive an apparent non-uni- 
formity to be an effect produced by, and an evidence 
of the existence of, an agent outside of Nature, or of 
the System of Things. And while ready to believe 
almost any kind of extraordinary new phenomenon — 
even an immaculate conception, or a resurrection from 
the dead, if the witnesses could stand cross-examina- 
tion, not merely as to honesty and veracity, but as to 
liability, or otherwise, to be influenced in their beliefs 
by current popular myths, and experienced, or re- 
ported hallucinations — while ready to believe almost 
any kind of duly-authenticated non-uniformity, as 
they would call it, I believe that there is no one who 
has experimentally studied, and unprejudicedly reflected 
on the Conservation of Energy, but will be convinced 
that the cause of all phenomena whatever must, and 
may, be found in the System itself of Things. 

B. But how would such a reply materially differ 
from that which any one would make who had but 
rightly apprehended the conception of Law as defined 
merely by the ordinary scientific doctrine of Uniformity ? 

A. It would differ, I think, in this : that it would 
explicitly state that what, in the definition of Law, is 
meant by Uniformity of Sequence is such a uniformity 
as is dependent on an original Mutuality of Co-existence, 
or Mutual Determination of the parts of Matter ; and 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 



231 



further, that this notion of Eeciprocity is derived from, 
and founded on, the great experimental generalisation 
of the Conservation of Energy. 

B. Well, it may, no doubt, be desirable to make 
the conception of Eeciprocity more prominent in our 
definition of Law. For all the changes of which His- 
tory is full, all the vicissitudes of the human race, their 
progress or their decay, their happiness or their misery, 
are unquestionably the fruit of a double action ; an 
action of external phenomena on the mind, and another 
action of the mind on the phenomena. Thus we have 
Man modifying Nature, and Nature modifying Man ; 
while out of this reciprocal modification all events 
must necessarily spring. 

A. All, then, that I say is, that the principle of the 
Conservation of Energy has appeared to me to give 
such new clearness . and clefiniteness to the conception 
of reciprocal action, as to require, in our definition of 
Law, a more explicit expression than hitherto of this 
conception of Mutual Determination. 

B. But the principle of Conservation means 
simply that Force can neither be created nor de- 
stroyed. And I do not quite see how you derive 
from such a principle that conception of Mutuality 
of Co-existence, or Mutual Determination, which seems 
to be the name you prefer giving to the conception of 
Eeciprocity. 

A. The conception of Mutual Determination was with 
me, first of all, but a generalisation of that conception 
of Atoms as mutually-determining Centres of Pressure 
through which, and through which alone, it seemed 



232 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



possible to assimilate the causes of ordinary mecha- 
nical motions, and of those motions usually attributed to 
' attractions ' and ' repulsions.' But that this concep- 
tion of Atoms had its true foundation and chief evi- 
dence in the principle of the Conservation of Energy ; 
and hence, that that conception of Mutual Determina- 
tion, which is but an abstract expression of this concep- 
tion of Atoms, is but a development of the principle 
of Conservation, has become clear to me in various ways. 

B. Well, how? that is just what I want to 
know. 

A. In the first place, it became evident that the 
principle of Conservation was itself but a develop- 
ment of the fundamental scientific conception of the 
Unity of Nature ; and hence, that it was but a deduc- 
tion from this principle that an effort should be made 
to assimilate the causes of attractions with those of 
ordinary motions, and to show that, if the latter are 
due to differential relations of pressure, so likewise are 
the former. But, secondly and principally, the more 
thoroughly modern physical theories and their funda- 
mental conceptions were studied, the more evident it 
became that, as in all of them, Atoms, variously as 
they are conceived, have yet all this common charac- 
teristic, that they are conceived as self -subsisting bodies, 
— bodies which would be what they are whatever the 
differences in other bodies, or even were all other bodies 
annihilated, — such theories, traced to their last concep- 
tions and postulates, imply a denial of the principle of 
Conservation. But if so, then this principle is to be 
fundamentally preserved only in theories which, — 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 233 



however variously, for the sake of illustration or mathe- 
matical convenience, Atoms may be conceived in them, 
— yet, have all the common characteristic of postulating 
Atoms as mutually determining. And this conception 
by no means implies the variation of the ultimate Atoms, 
but rather their constancy ; for, if Atoms be mutually 
determining, no one ultimate Atom could vary without 
all varying ; and hence the constancy of the ultimate 
Atoms and the permanency of the universal System 
imply each other. Yet further, and thirdly, I derived 
the conception of Mutual Determination from that of 
the Conservation of Energy in this way. That principle 
is simply the generalisation of the fact that, in investi- 
gating the origin of any new form of Force, we find 
that there is no creation in respect of quantity, or, in 
other words, that, in every change, there is a quantita- 
tive equivalence of transformation. But may we not, 
then, put to ourselves the question whether, were we 
to investigate the conditions of the action, and continued 
existence, of any particular form of Force, we should 
not find that there is no independence in respect of 
quality. We know that quantities are relative, de- 
pending on pre-existing conditions, and we ask whether 
qualities may not be correlative, depending on co- 
existing conditions. And then, as the accepted Law of 
quantitative relativity gives the conception of a Series 
equivalent in its successions ; does not the Law of quali- 
tative relativity, which would appear to be logically 
thence derivable, give the conception of a System 
mutually determining in its co-existences ? 

B. There certainly seems something in that. 



234 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



A. Perhaps the shortest and simplest way of put- 
ting it would be this : You said just now that, in the 
largest sphere of all, it is out of the reciprocal modifi- 
cation of the two elements, Man and Nature, that all 
the Events of History must necessarily spring. Well, 
I merely add that, if so, this conception of reciprocal 
action must be carried out consistently and universally, 
even though it should very considerably change our 
present notions of the ultimate parts of Matter. 

B. That seems philosophical enough. 

A. I trust so. This conception of Atoms as mutually 
determining has not, however, been suggested, so far 
as I am aware, by any one else. Yet, if it were not 
that people so commonly exaggerate the importance of 
original notions, I should say that it seems to me likely 
to have — well, considerable suggestiveness. For in- 
stance : do you not think that it might, at least, 
help to the solution of the problem of the origin of 
Life? 

B. I confess that I do not at once quite see how. 
But in favour of the opinion, that some bodies are 
living, and that others are dead, we have nothing, ex- 
cept the circumstance, that our researches, so far as 
they have yet gone, have shown that cellular structure, 
growth, and reproduction, are not the invariable pro- 
perties of Matter, but are excluded from a large part 
of the visible world, which, on that account, we call 
inanimate. This is the whole of the argument on that 
side of the question. On the other side, we have the 
fact, that our sight, and the artificial instruments, by 
whose aid we have arrived at this conclusion, are con- 



.Chap.II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF COBAL. 



235 



fessedly imperfect ; and we have the further fact, that, 
imperfect as they are, they have proved that the or- 
ganic kingdom is infinitely more extensive than the 
boldest dreamer had ever imagined, while they have 
not been able to enlarge the boundaries of the inorganic 
kingdom to anything like the same amount. And I 
think it can hardly, therefore, be doubted that we shall 
sooner or later come to the conclusion that Life is a 
property of all Matter, and that the classification of 
bodies into animate and inanimate, or into organic and 
inorganic, is merely a provisional arrangement, conve- 
nient, perhaps, for our present purposes, but which, 
like all similar divisions, will eventually be merged in 
a higher and wider scheme. 

A. But how can any conclusion of that sort, express 
it how we may, ever be established, except through a 
similar conception of the ultimate elements of Matter, 
both animate and inanimate, — through a conception, I 
mean, of the Atom similar to that of the Cell? Now, 
whatever our definition of the ultimate elements of 
animate Matter may be, or, in other words, whatever 
our definition of Cells may be, this, at least, is certain, 
that they are bodies existing only in, and through, 
their co-existence. If, however, Atoms, or the ele- 
ments of inanimate Matter, are conceived, as in all the 
theories of them hitherto, namely, as self-subsisting 
bodies, it is evident that the introduction into the 
Universe of a Cell can be accounted for only by the 
hypothesis of an extraneous interference, a Miracle, 
the intervention of a being or force outside the System 
itself of Things. Tor a Cell would then be an existence 



236 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt III, 



of an utterly new kind. Not so, however, is it, if 
Atoms are conceived as, — even if, in the Universe, so 
far as known to us, constant in their forms and qua- 
lities, yet, — dependent for their forms and qualities 
on, and so, related by laws of co-existence with, co- 
existing Atoms. For the essential characteristic of 
Life is, in fact, nothing but just this Mutual Determi- 
nation. And conceiving Atoms, as I suggest, Cells would 
be conceived as bodies, not of a new kind, but merely 
of a higher degree. And hence, would not the problem 
of the origin of Life be thus virtually solved ? 

B. I can imagine such a conception being, at least, 
made the basis of the solution. 

A. To have the possibility of the problem thus 
being solved practically admitted would more than 
content me. 

B. But have we not drifted altogether away from 
our main subject? I asked you how you thought the 
Ultimate Law of History was to be discovered. You 
began telling me how you had attempted to discover it. 
But we have got no further than your first step. That, 
you said, was an inductive inquiry into the meaning of 
Law, or of the scientific conception of Causation. I 
have once or twice asked how this inquiry and its 
results had advanced you on the road to the discovery 
you had in view. But my questions seem only to have 
led to further digressions. Here we are now discussing 
the problem of the origin of Life. And I have not yet 
been told what your inquiry into Causation, whatever 
else it may have suggested, has suggested towards the 
discovery of the Ultimate Law of History ? 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 237 

A. It has already suggested what will, I hope, be 
found to be, at least, an approximate statement of that 
Law. 

B. Indeed ! In what terms ? 

A. In terms that follow at once from establishing 
it as a fact that the scientific and ultimate conception 
of Causation is definable as that of Mutual Determi- 
nation; Hence, I do not think, that our discussion of 
how I arrived at, what I would be understood to mean 
by, and how I would apply, the conception of Mutual 
Determination, has been in any degree more irrelevant 
to our main subject than the studies of those years 
which I have spent in arriving at this conception 
through physical research. For, as I have said, the- 
immediate result of establishing this as the true con- 
ception of Causation is nothing less than what should 
seem to be an, at least, approximate statement of the 
Law, which w r as the great end I had in view in this 
physical inquiry into Causation. 

B. Let me hear, then, this approximate statement. 

A. There is a Change in our conceptions of the 
Causes of Change which may be defined as an advance 
from the conception of Onesided Determination to that 
of Mutual Determination, 

B. From the conception of Onesided Determination ? 
A. Well, say rather, if you like, from the conception 

of Causes as Unreciprocal Eelations to the conception 
of Causes as Reciprocal Eelations. For is it not clear 
that, if the principle of Conservation does really lead 
to a development of the conception of Causation which 
makes explicit that conception of reciprocal action 



238 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



which is but implied in the conception of Uniform 
Sequence ; then, Causes must be defined as Eeciprocal 
Eelations, and Forces, as Elements of that Eeciprocal 
Eelation which Ave name a Cause ? But if it is clear 
that Causation is, and Causes are, thus ultimately con- 
ceived, still more unquestionable it is that events are 
primitively conceived as the effects of Agents which, in 
producing change, are not themselves equivalently 
affected; that causes, therefore, are primitively con- 
ceived as Unreciprocal Eelations ; and hence, that the 
primitive, is, in relation to the ultimate, form of the 
conception of Causation, to be defined as the conception 
of Onesided Determination. 

B. I think I now understand something of what 
you mean by your approximate statement of the Law of 
History. But Hume's theory of the Natural History of 
Eeligion was also a theory of two great stages in men's 
conceptions of Causation — first, the theological stage, 
with its three divisions of Vulgar Polytheism (or what 
we now call Fetichism), Polytheism, and Monotheism ; 
and finally, that philosophical stage in which, as he said, 
a deliberate doubt is maintained respecting all causes 
beyond those which are found in the steady inviolable 
laws by which everything is surely governed. Have 
you thought of comparing your approximate law with 
the theory of your great countryman ? 

A. The very moment, I may say, after it occurred 
to me that the Law of History might be, at least, 
approximately stated in such terms as I have just used, 
I compared this statement of it with Comte's Law, and 
that Theory of Hume's which Comte but formulated. 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 



230 



And the correspondence of my statement of the fact 
of a change in our conceptions of Causation and of the 
nature of it, both with the Law of the Three Periods, 
and Hume's Theory, seemed to me no unimportant con- 
firmation. Only, I venture to hope that there may be 
found both some advantage and some advance, in 
defining the two great, and, as would appear, primitive 
and ultimate stages in the history of Thought in such 
terms as have been the result of no mere metaphysical 
speculation, but of an actual experimental inquiry into 
the true scope and meaning of the greatest of modern 
physical principles, the Conservation of Energy. 

B. Well, I make no doubt that this doctrine of 
Conservation is destined to revolutionize our habits of 
thought, and to give to future speculations a basis 
infinitely wider than any previously known. 

A. So I most strongly think. And the grounds of 
my confidence in the Law I have stated are what I 
think I may justly call three immense, and ever- widen- 
ing inductive generalisations. The first of these is, that 
Causes are primitively conceived as Spirits, and that all 
our theological conceptions hitherto, the most refined 
and abstract, no less than the grossest and most concrete, 
have but this parentage. JNfow, my characterization of 
the first stage of the conception of Causation as a con- 
ception of Onesided Determination, or of Causes as 
Unreciprocal Eelations, is but an analysis and further 
generalisation of this inductive generalisation. But my 
characterization of the ultimate stage of the conception 
of Causation is no less, I think, an analysis and further 
generalisation of that conception of Causation which 



240 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



we are given by the greatest of modern inductive gene- 
ralisations, the principle of the Conservation of Energy. 
And the connecting of these two conceptions of Cau- 
sation, — the conceptions of Onesided Determination 
and of Mutual Determination, — the conception of 
Causes as Unreciprocal, and as Eeciprocal Eelations— 
the connecting of these simpler, and more complex 
conceptions as earlier, and later forms of the conception 
of Causation, I bring into relation with, and justify by, 
that third great inductive generalisation which defines 
Evolution as the change from homogeneity to hetero- 
geneity, from comparative simplicity to comparative 
complexity. 

B. You seem to have, so far at least, abandoned the 
Method hitherto characteristic of your countrymen. 

A. I have not so much abandoned, as sought to 
combine with the speculative, the inductive method. 
And is not, indeed, the accordance of Hume's purely 
speculative theory with the later results of observation 
and experiment, evidence that there was some truth, as 
well as sublimity, in that favourite saying of Hegel's : 
' Das verschlossene Wesen des Universums hat keine 
Kraft in sich, welche dem Muthe des Erkennens Wider- 
stand leisten konnte ; es muss sich vor ihm aufthun, und 
seinen Eeichthum und seine Tiefen ihm vor Augen 
legen, und zum Genusse bringen ? ' 1 

B. Well, I certainly think that Hume's theory is not 

1 Encyhlopddie, Anrede: Werlze,\>. xi. s. xl., and GescJiicJite der Philo- 
sophie, Antrittsrede, ; Werhe, b. xiii. s. 6 : — ' The hidden Secret of the 
Universe has no power in it successfully to withstand the enthusiasm 
of knowledge, to which open itself it must, and its riches and its depths 
lay before the eyes and offer for enjoyment.' 



Chap. H. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF COR AL. 241 

only plausible, but has probably a great deal of truth 
in it. Yet, one must not forget that eighty years be- 
fore him, Cudworth, trained in the school of Bacon, 
set forth in his 4 Intellectual System of the Universe,' a 
prodigious erudition to prove that, in the ancient world, 
not Polytheism, as Hume affirmed, but the belief in 
one God was the prevailing doctrine. Nor is it strange 
that Cudworth and Hume, pursuing opposite methods, 
should have obtained opposite results, since such a dis- 
crepancy is unavoidable when men investigate, accord- 
ing to different plans, a subject which, in the existing 
state of knowledge, is, perhaps, hardly as yet amenable 
to scientific treatment. 

A. But, that the problem of the Ultimate Law of 
History is, even in the existing state of knowledge, 
amenable to scientific treatment, is just what it is my 
whole effort to show. And as to Cudworth and Hume 
having arrived at opposite results, I do not think that, 
on further considering them, you will find that they 
are really, though apparently contradictory. Cudworth 
I read long before I read Hume. And though I now 
maintain Hume's theory as, in fact, but an earlier form 
of my own ; yet I have by no means abandoned Cud- 
worth's. On the contrary, my recent Egyptian studies 
and reflections have more that ever convinced me of 
the truth of the conclusion he founded on such an 
immense number of testimonies. 

B. How can you possibly reconcile their results, or 
hold them both in a coherent theory? 

A. Simply by having regard to the fact that Hume 
spoke of the vulgar, and Cudworth of the thinkers. 

R 



242 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



Cudworth advances no facts showing Monotheism to 
have been a primitive popular doctrine ; and only if he 
had advanced such facts would his inductive results 
have been contradictory of the speculative results of 
Hume. Facts showing Monotheism to have been, and 
from very early times, a prevailing doctrine among 
thinkers, the higher priesthood, and those initiated in 
the Mysteries, he certainly brings forward ; but such 
facts by no means, I think, impugn the theory of Hume as 
to the origin of monotheistic conceptions. And though 
my own Egyptian studies have led me to believe it 
extremely probable that the great secret of the Higher 
Mysteries was the mythicism of the Gods of popular 
belief, and hence the mythicism of the popular concep- 
tions of a future state of punishment and reward in a 
Hell and a Heaven, — an Amenti, and a Eegion of 
Sacred Eepose ; — yet, in holding such higher beliefs to 
have existed contemporaneously with the polytheism 
of the vulgar, I am by no means required to hold also 
that they were the primitive ones ; and in my theory, 
therefore, as to the monotheistic secret of the Mysteries, 
there is nothing contradictory of my theory as to the 
nature and origin of Monotheism. 

B. But my impression certainly is that Cudworth 
maintains Monotheism to be, not merely the late 
philosophic, but also the primitive popular doctrine. 

A. Well, you may be right, but I think not. It is 
Cudworth's facts only that I distinctly remember. And 
these, I think I may confidently assert, would support 
no such conclusion as that of the primitiveness of 
Monotheism. 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 243 

B. Hume's theory undoubtedly appears the more 
probable. But now again, as to your own. I am glad 
that you yourself consider it as but at best an approxi- 
mate statement of the Ultimate Law of History. But 
admitting that you may have made an approximation 
to the discovery ■ of that Law, how do you state to 
yourself what is next to be done, and by what means 
do you hope to accomplish it ? 

A. Clearly I think that what is next to be done is 
to state in sufficiently general, yet distinctly verifiable 
terms, the process of the advance from the conception 
of Onesided, to that of Mutual Determination. That 
the great secret of the history of Thought, and the 
inmost secret, therefore, of the general development of 
Humanity is, that there is a Change in men's notions 
of the Causes of Change, or, in other words, that the 
fundamejital conception of Causation itself has a history, 
— that, the contrast of our modern conceptions of Law 
with earlier conceptions of Gods. — and more especially 
the definition which is, I think, given to the conception 
of Law by the great experimental principle of Conser- 
vation, — has made clear. And that the seeing of this 
gives one some insight into the cause, not only of Human 
Development generally, but more especially of the Ee- 
volution in the midst of which we now are, one may 
also, I think, confidently affirm. For the more one 
reflects on the subject, and the more one considers 
the co-existences of social facts, the more clear their 
correlation, or correspondence with each other becomes ; 
the more clear also that the most essential phenomena 
of all are the conceptions formed of Causation, or of 



244 



RIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



the causes of things ; and the more clear, therefore, it 
becomes that, if we can generalise the changes of these 
phenomena we shall generalise, or be at once led to 
the generalisation of the changes of all other pheno- 
mena. Compare, for instance, the history of Political 
Institutions with the history, as I have defined it, of the 
conception of Causation. In all those societies in 
which this conception, as manifested in the Philosophy, 
written or unwritten, and Eeligion of the people, is 
distinguishable as a conception of Onesided Determina- 
tion ; there, the Social Authority submitted to will be 
found, I think, of a type which, in its more or less 
external and onesided character, accords with the 
greater or less absoluteness of the co-existing concep- 
tion of Causation. And does not my definition of the 
ultimate conception of Causation accord with all one's 
convictions, as well as hopes, with respect to the ulti- 
mate character of Political Institutions ? For what are 
Eepublican Institutions in the highest conception of 
them ; not as they were in antiquity, for then, with 
helots and slaves, there were not, nor could there as yet 
be, true Eepublics ; but Eepublican Institutions in that 
conception of them which will accord with those 
highest conceptions of Law won by Philosophy? 
What are such Institutions, but institutions of Liberty, 
of Mutual Determination, of an organised reciprocity 
of conscious Eights and Duties ? 

B. Well, the correlation of social phenomena, and 
the dependence of them on intellectul laws, is what it has 
been my own great aim to show. And, supposing that 
there is, in fact, a great historical change in one's con- 



Chap. II. THE SHORE OF THE SEA OF CORAL. 



245 



ceptions of Causation, and that you have rightly defined 
the earlier and later forms of the conception ; then, no 
doubt, the next thing to be done is, as you say, verifi- 
ably to generalise the process of this change. But 
what means or method are you using to discover this 
process ? 

A. I am endeavouring further to develop the con- 
sequences, with reference to Origins generally, of the 
principle of Conservation, as a principle of Mutual 
Determination, or Co-existence. 

B. You have fallen back, then, on the deductive 
method. 

A. Yes ; but it is deduction, or speculation, founded 
on an inductively ascertained generalisation. 

B. Oh, I by no means object to your thus alter- 
nately using induction and deduction. 

A. Well, whether it is in this way or some other 
that I shall be led to discover and define the historical 
process of the change from the earlier, to the later 
conception of Causation ; of this, at least, I am per- 
suaded, that, when this process is discovered, we shall 
see those various intellectual antagonisms of Philosophy 
and Eeligion, and of Idealism and Materialism, which 
have marked these last two milleniums and a half of 
human history, to have been but the necessities of an 
imperfect, and the means of working-out a perfect, 
theory of Causation. 

But the boys now came up with the shells they had 
been gathering for Mr. Buckle. Of the wonderfully 
numerous, various, and beautiful shells, with which the 
beach was strewn, Mr. Buckle, assisted by the boys, 



240 



P1L GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



made a really valuable collection. And how Elysian, I 
thought, — as the boys came up with their shells, and 
the discussion terminated, — how Elysian were life, all 
gathering for each other, on the strand of our little star- 
island, the beautiful shells of natural Law, and bathing 
in the gleaming sea of the Infinite ! 

Among the many minor topics of talk dining our 
stay here, at the Palm-grove of Akaba, I find noted, in 
my Diary, 4 Dutch Poetry,' and, more particularly, 
4 Conversation as a Means of Education.' Nor was 
Mr. Buckle's opinion on this subject a mere topic of 
talk, but a principle of action. To this, indeed, it was 
that I was indebted for all the intellectual advancement 
of my journey with him. Even with respect to the 
young boys who were his sole companions before I 
joined him, it may be remembered that, in one of those 
earlier letters which I have quoted, he says that his 
habit was 4 to encourage them to state their opinions, 
then, to give them his, and explain how it was that 
they differed.' 

Would that Mr. Buckle's noble example in this 
respect were more generally followed ! Ordinarily, 
discussion is a mere defence of opposed opinions ; and 
argument, a contemptible argufying, of which the 
object is, not truth, but triumph. More fitly, then, 
than by thus noting Mr. Buckle's opinion and practice 
with regard to 4 Conversation as a Means of Education,' 
I could not, I think, conclude the above account of 
that longest and most fruitful series of discussions with 
him of which the scene was the Shore of the Sea of 
Coral. 



247 



CHAPTER III. 

TO HEBRON BY BETE A. 

At length, on the morning of Sunday the 30th of 
March, thanks chiefly to the well-known dragoman 
Abd-el-Attee, then with the American party, all was 
apparently settled. For he was not only a clever, de- 
termined fellow, but, fortunately for us, he had once 
stood surety for the principal Sheykh when in trouble at 
Cairo, and he, though now in the full tide of prosperity, 
was barbarian enough not to forget the service. So 
the tents were struck, and, — after sundry accidents, 
through camels venting their customary spite in throw- 
ing their loads into the Sea, and other such pleasantries, 
— we began our march. 

But I soon found that, in the change of animals that 
here took place, there had fallen to my lot the very 
ill-naturedest of old spinster dromedaries. Unfortunate 
brute, to have such a morose, malignant, and miserable 
soul ! ' Xanthippe ' I called her. I fed her on what- 
ever I thought she would like best, and tried every 
means I could think of to make friends with her. But 
I gave it up, at last, as of no use. For when I fed her, 
she gave but a spiteful cry, and tried to bite my hand. 
This she would no doubt have liked best, and it would 



248 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



have pleased her to crunch ; but there are limits to 
one's sacrifices in attempting to make friends with malig- 
nant natures. And still, for all I could do, her fixed 
idea seemed to be, to run-away with me, and break my 
neck. When, however, in a larger Psychology, mental 
phenomena are analysed and compared, not only as 
manifested among different races of men, but among 
different classes of animals, some light may, perhaps, 
be thrown on this cursedness of camels. 1 

And so we started again on our journey, now up the 
wide Arabah, between the mountain ranges that bound 
the wilderness of Zin, on towards Petra. We were in the 
lower part of that vast geological fissure called in its 
upper part Coelesyria, the Lake of Galilee, the Valley 
of the Jordan, and the Dead Sea ; that historical 
Borderland between Syria and Arabia which had been 
traversed, not only by wandering Semitic tribes of 
Hebrews and Arabs, but by innumerable armies of 
Jews, of Edomites, of Idumseans, of NabathaBans, of 
Greeks, of Eomans, of Saracens, and of Crusaders. How 
many strata of Human Life one may here see in 
thought ! A hundred armed men we mustered, with 
sixty or seventy camels and dromedaries, all marshalled 
in warlike array, with scouts on the flanks, the great 
Sheykhs galloping on horseback to the rear, or to the 
van, and Mr. Buckle ambling somewhere or another 
on ' Lucius.' The long line in which it moved gave 
the Caravan a very imposing appearance. But no 

1 Compare Palgrave, Central Arabia, vol. i. p. 40. 1 The camel is 
from first to last an undomesticated and savage animal, rendered ser- 
viceable by stupidity alone. . . . One passion alone lie possesses, namely, 
revenge, of which he furnishes many a hideous example.' 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



249 



more luxurious sending-on of the tents and baggage to 
have dinner all ready when we dismounted for the 
day. And after having had the first night to wait for 
dinner an unaccustomed time, our digestion of it was 
rather disturbed by a further demand, from our guides 
and protectors, of a thousand piastres, without which we 
were threatened with being left to shift for ourselves in 
the Desert, without either animals or provisions. This 
demand, however, was firmly and indignantly resisted. 
And the terms of our treaty were at length understood 
to be finally settled. 

Like historical progress, though the Caravan, as a 
whole, steadily advanced, the parts of which it was 
composed were constantly changing their relative posi- 
tions ; those now in advance soon after appearing in 
danger of being left behind ; some always riding-up 
to, or falling back on us, and so we by others. Thus 
Mr. Buckie and I during the whole of this Caravan- 
journey to Petra, and thence to Hebron, had no more 
of our uninterrupted, and from day to day continued, 
philosophical discussions. Instead of these, however, 
one had many pleasant conversations with the various 
members of the four united parties ; not the least 
agreeable, certainly, of whom, were the two young 
Parisian- American ladies, whom we had the good for- 
tune to have in our midst, or rather, I should say, in 
our van. But Mr. Buckle and I did have a few of 
our usual discussions. And one particularly I find 
noted, and remember in association with this journey 
up the Arabah, — a discussion joined in by the German 
clergyman of the Baronet's party, whom Mr. Buckle, 



250 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



as may be remembered, had first met at the party 

the P s and I gave on board our dahabiah at 

Syene. 

In Mi*. Gottlob as a German, I found an ally against 
Mr. Buckle in my contention for the importance of 
Moral Forces as historical Causes ; but found in him, as 
a theologian, an opponent to my conception of these 
forces. And presently the essential point of the whole 
dispute was touched in the antithesis of Transcendence 
and Immanence. For the question as to the possibility 
of explaining historical phenomena without defining, 
and giving weight to, the action of Moral Eorces widens 
into that of the explicability of phenomena generally 
without an hypothesis of the action of Thought, Eeason, 
Will. But let the impossibility of explaining pheno- 
mena, historical or other, without a special reckoning 
of Ideal Forces be admitted ; there still evidently re- 
mains the question as to how such forces are to be 
conceived ; whether as Transcendent in a Supernatural 
Being outside the System of Nature, or as Immanent 
in that System itself? Mr. Gottlob, of course, as a 
theologian, maintained the existence of Ideal Forces 
in this transcendent fashion. And here Mr. Buckle 
with his Deism, which, notwithstanding all his anti- 
theological zeal, he but obscurely saw to be but a 
specially indefensible theology, agreed with the Ger- 
man. For myself, however, I thought with Hume, the 
great founder of the Scottish School, and the co-initiator 
with Kant of a new period of European Philosophy, 
that ' the story of the Indian philosopher and his ele- 
phant was never more applicable than to the present 



Chap. III. TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



251 



subject. If the material world rests upon a similar 
ideal world, this ideal world must rest upon some 
other ; and so on without end. It were better, there- 
fore, never to look beyond the present material world. 
But supposing it to contain the principle of its order' 
within itself we really assert it to be God ; and the 
sooner we arrive at that Divine Being so much the 

better To say that all this order in animals 

and vegetables proceeds ultimately from design is 
begging the question ; nor can that great point be as- 
certained otherwise than by proving a priori, both that 
order is, from its nature, inseparably attached to 
Thought, and that it can never of itself, or from 
original unknown principles, belong to Matter.' 1 

Nor, as I maintained, was this a mere open question, 
a question, that is, with respect to which opposite con- 
clusions might be come to, with an equal show of 
evidence. For the validity of the hypothesis of such 
a Supernatural Existence as that contended for must 
evidently depend very much on its origin, and on 
whether or not it is more firmly held, the more know- 
ledge increases. Now, as to the origin of this hypo- 
thesis, it is to be found in that earlier stage of men's 
conceptions of Causation, which Hume (in that pro- 
found theory of 6 The Natural History of Beligion,' 
of which Comte's Law of the Three Periods was little 
more than a formulising) was the first adequately to 
distinguish as the Theological Stage, in its three pro- 
gressive periods of Vulgar Polytheism (called by Comte 

1 Dialogues concerning Natural Religion, Phil. Works, vol. ii. pp. 
463-85. 



252 



TIL GR IM-MEM01UES. 



Part III. 



Fetichisra), Polytheism, and Monotheism. 1 And as to 
whether this hypothesis of a Supernatural Being is 
more firmly held as knowledge increases, the fact 
would certainly appear to be that, as Hume likewise 
pointed- out, the more knowledge is increased, the 
more firmly is a 4 deliberate doubt ' maintained re- 
specting all causes beyond those which are found in 
the interrelations of things themselves. 2 In confirma- 
tion of this, we find that, of the two great historical 
races of Aryans and Semites, that one, of which the 
belief in a definitely conceived Supernatural Being out- 
side, and independent of the System of Nature has been 
characteristic, has achieved incomparably less than the 
other, the great Aryan race, in Philosophy, in Art, and 
in Jurisprudence. And we cannot, therefore, but con- 
clude against the transcendental hypothesis of Ideal 
Forces, and that, whether it is held as a philosophical 
conception, or as a religious belief. 

But what is the cause of the excitement there ? Two 
cobras have been caught, and one, which has been 
dexterously pinned by the neck in the slit end of a stick, 
its captor comes up triumphantly to exhibit, and some- 
what maliciously to submit to the inspection of Mr. 
Buckle much more closely than he desired. After a 
time, the fellow let it go, refusing to kill it, and per- 
mitting it to glide away unharmed. This, I understood 

1 Compare Natural History of Religion, Phil. Works, vol. iv. pp. 445, 
458, 472. 

2 This is what Huine evidently means, though his words are, 4 the 
steady inviolable laws' by which 'everything is surely governed' — a 
very objectionable phraseology, as it appears to me. See Dialogues 
concerning Natural Religion, Phil. Works, vol. ii. p. 480. 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



to be from fear — how curious in a fellow who had 
shown himself so fearless ! — fear of the vengeance after 
death of what, in life, had been incapable of defending 
itself. And at Petra — to note here another relic, is 
it ? of primaeval Serpent-worship — the snakes which 
Hamilton, a fearless hunter of them, killed, the Arabs 
would not allow to lie within the encampment, asserting 
that we should thus bring the whole snake-tribe, to 
which the individual belonged, to avenge the death of 
their kinsman. Soon after tins snake-incident, as once 
previously, in the desert of Sinai, quails were seen, but 
not shot. And presently the word was given for a 
general dismount to lunch. 

Eemounting, we continued our journey. And pass- 
ing to the moral side of the question as to Transcen- 
dence and Immanence, the topics of Freewill and 
Necessity, of Justice and Expediency, naturally arose 
for discussion. As to the doctrine of Freewill, I main- 
tained that I thought it could be historically proved 
that all the wretched logomachy on the subject had 
arisen but from the attempt to reconcile with Aryan 
notions of Justice the Semitic conception of an almighty 
Creator-God. To Jews and to Arabs, accustomed to 
the arbitrary despotism of their political organisations, 
there was not, in general, anything shocking to their 
undeveloped conceptions of Justice in the idea of a 
Creator punishing his creatures. To Greeks and to 
Romans, however, with conceptions of Justice developed 
in great ethical and judicial systems, there was some- 
thing shocking in this idea. And hence, as it appears 
to me, the development of the doctrine by which the 



254 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



mysterious attribute of Freewill is attributed to Man, 
a doctrine by which men take the blame of Evil mag- 
nanimously on themselves, and so justify their almighty 
Creator in punishing them for it. 

Nor could I admit that the supposed theological 
fact of Freewill is the foundation and necessary con- 
dition of Morality. What is the true basis of Morality 
is the fact (as I believe it can be shown to be) — the fact 
that, along with the selfish impulses of our nature, there 
are equally original and underived unselfish impulses ; 
that, along with wants of Self oneness there are, in our 
nature, wants of Oneness-with-others ; and that Con- 
science is an expression of the relative strength of the 
latter class of Wants, leading to judgment being given 
in their favour when the two come into conflict. Hence, 
therefore, self-reproach for a selfish action is, in a man 
of strong unselfish impulses; and want of oneness-with- 
others, by no means diminished by his seeing that that 
selfish action was the necessary result of his selfish im- 
pulses, and of the circumstances under which they were 
so stimulated as to overpower his unselfish impulses. 
ISTor does this have an immoral, but, on the contrary, a 
highly moral effect. For, it being thus clear to him 
that, under similar circumstances, he will certainly act 
in a similar manner again ; if the unselfish impulses of 
his nature have any strength at all, this will urge 
him to take means to prevent such a repetition of 
defeat. Of these means, punishment he will admit to 
be one of the most effective. Hence, therefore, not 
only justification of the fellow-man who condemns him, 
but willing submission to the punishment awarded. No 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY BETH A. 



255 



justification, however, will he find for the Creator 
who made, and yet condemns ; nor will the thought of 
punishment by him excite aught but, as in Goethe, for 
instance, and Shelley, magnificent revolt and glorious 
blasphemy. 

But again our discussion is interrupted by observing 
a rush to one spot. And we find that a little incident 
has occurred which, in its illustration of the necessary 
miseries of sentient existence, seems to me a finely ironic 
commentary on the notion of a benevolent Creator. A 
gazelle had been run down by, and with difficulty rescued 
from the £ Major.' He seemed desirous of destroying the 
beautiful creature, for very love, perhaps, of her languish- 
ing eyes. Such a thing, at any rate, would not have 
been unprecedented. Indeed, the difference of the effects 
produced by her eyes was remarkable. For there was 
a warm conflict of opinion as to whether she should be 
killed and. eaten, or let eat and go. I strongly urged 
that we should best show our liking for her by adopting 
the latter course. And this was finally agreed to. 
But I had my suspicions afterwards that it was not into 
the Desert that she disappeared, and that the scruples 
of the masters only made meat of her for the men. 
Poor gentle and beautiful creature, with her little cry 
of heart-struck terror ! 

At length, on the evening of the fourth day of our 
journey from Akabah, we encamped on a tableland at 
the foot of the central mountains of Eclom, and at the 
entrance of the pass by Mount Hor to Petra. But 
there was again a hitch ; and we were told that further 
we should not be allowed to go. So, after our open- 



256 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



air dinner, — which, by the way, was marked by so 
uncivil a reception of a very handsome snake, which 
was advancing with swift undulations to join us, that 
it was the death of him, — I went to a council of war 
at the Baronet's tent. We did not break up till nearly 
midnight, and with no very practical conclusion being 
come to, save that three of us, two Scotsmen and an 
American, were resolved to venture, if better could 
not be, alone, and. at all risks. We then departed to 
our respective tents, expecting, not, certainly, to be 
shot the next day, if we united any degree of good- 
humoured forbearance with determination in achieving 
the adventure ; but thinking it not improbable that we 
might have a taste of imprisonment on bread and water 
in the caves of Petra, and possibly have to pay some 
considerable ransom. But as the proposed adventure 
may be very differently qualified, it is not requisite for 
me to say whether I was one of the two Scotsmen or 
not, and especially as it became unnecessary to carry it 
out. For next morning, as the adventurers were pre- 
paring to set-out, they were told that all the four 
parties would, after all, be allowed to proceed. The 
whole long day, however, till midnight again was spent 
in councils, despatching of messengers, arriving of 
Sheykhs, more councils, threats, promises, refusals ; 
then beginning it all over again ; excitement among 
the lower orders on one side, greater excitement among 
the same classes on the other side ; trickiness with the 
Sheykhs, determination with the Howadji ; a whole 
course of diplomacy, in which the tricksters were foiled 
at last. 

On the morning of the 4th of April we had, then, 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETE A. 



257 



permission, at length, to enter Petra. And each of 
our four companies, according to priority in finishing 
breakfast, and packing tents, was lost in the mountains. 
The magnificent grandeur of the pass is indescribable. 
Through a narrow ravine, we ascended up a steep 
mountain-side, amid a splendour of colour from bare 
rock or clothing verdure, and a solemnity of light on 
the broad summits, of shade in the profound depths — 
a memory for ever. At the head of the pass, more 
Sheykhs, but friendly, which was well, for there must 
have been nearly two miles between the foremost men 
and the last stragglers of the Caravan in its long wind- 
ing ascent. It was the same narrow path up which in 
old times had come other trains of camels laden with 
the merchandise of India, Arabia, and Egypt. 1 And 
thus having ascended, we had next a long descent to 
the foot of Mount Hor, which stands isolated. 

On the pastures of the Hill of Arun (Jebel Haroun) 
graze flocks of sheep and goats, tended by the wildest 
shepherds and shepherdesses ; and from one of the 
latter I had my first draught of goat's-milk as a pre- 
parative for the ascent. But again, more opposition ; 
indeed, a very pretty little skirmish between the 
Bedawin conquerors and the but half-subdued Fel- 
lahin. At length, however, more fortunate than so 
many other travellers, 2 up we started on foot, each 

1 The passage by the Sik was the usual road ; only it is to be noted 
that that was not, as has been supposed, the only access practicable for 
laden camels. 

2 Laborde and Linant, and afterwards Robinson, were not permitted 
to attempt the ascent ; Burckhardt did not reach the Tomb ; and Cap- 
tains Irby and Mangles missed seeing the remarkable objects on the 
western side of the mountain. 

S 



258 



RIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IIT. 



with a savage or two at his elbow. Just under the 
summit I saw an inhabited cave ; at its threshold a 
broad flat rock, whereon a kid had just been slain ; 
in front, a smooth, green, flowery lawn. A fierce dog 
defended the mansion, but a wild young shepherdess 
bid him lie down. The sight of her made me again 
a-thirst. So I went up to her. But a horrible old 
woman advanced, sent the young one about her busi- 
ness, 1 and asked what I wanted. 4 Only a little milk/ 
I said, and sat down in the mouth of the cave, hoping 
my shepherdess might come back again. But it was 
out of a skin, handed me by the hag, that I had 
my second draught. To the ascent once more ; and 
now assisted by steps cut in the rock ; indeed, a tole- 
rably complete winding staircase ; and soon after ex- 
amining a remarkable, long, pillared vault, with a well 
at the end of it, the summit is achieved. Presently, 
up was dragged Mr. Buckle, looking, by reason of the 
steep ascent, under an Arabian sun, in winter garments, 
as if he had just been pulled out of the above-men- 
tioned well. 'Where is there shade?' he gasped. 
1 Give me an orange. JSTo wonder Aaron died when 
they dragged him up here ! ' 

From the roof of the Tomb, — now only an ordi- 
nary square building with a dome, — northward and 
southward, a hilly desert ; eastward, the mountains of 
Eclom, within which lies Petra hid ; westward, the 
desert of the Arabah, or wilderness of Zin ; beyond that, 
the desert of Et-Tih ; beyond that again, in the far 

1 The old women, however, more usually, I believe, act a very 
different part. 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



259 



horizon, the hills which we may believe that the eyes 
of the aged High Priest strained most to see, the blue- 
tinted hills of the Land of Promise. And wistfully 
looking — he died. I observed, however, that those 
now on the roof of his Tomb, lunched before they 
looked. Nor do I at all except him who took a note 
of it. For it is but a shallow soul that, in the midst 
of grand historical, or natural scenes, feels them so 
slightly as to fear destruction of the feeling of them 
by acknowledgment of the wants of the body. 

Satisfied with the outside, we attempted to see 
something of the inside of the Tomb. But now we 
had a specimen of that renewed spirit of Mohammedan 
fanaticism which, along with increasing liberalism, has 
been observable of late years, not only in India, but 
throughout all the Mediterranean East, from Algeria to 
Mecca, and from Damascus to Constantinople. 1 The 
entrance which was accorded to the Martineau party 
in 1847, at the rate of twenty piastres a head, and 
which Dean Stanley's party in 1852 seem to have had 
no difficulty about whatever, was determinedly, and 
indeed, fiercely refused to us. But Hamilton and I 
not caring to give it up without an effort, stayed 
behind to try the effect, on the guardians of the door, 
of the best mixture we could make-up of good- 
humoured force, and promises of baksheesh. Nothing, 
however, would induce them to let us have more than 
a peep through a chink in the old door. Yet, though 
it was annoying, one could not but respect fellows who 
refused to be bribed in such a matter. So we left them 

1 See Palgrave, Eastern Questions. 
s 2 



260 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pari in. 



with no unkindly feeling. Indeed, I rather liked the 
stuff that the fiercest of our opponents seemed made of 
— Arabian ' Covenanter ' that he was ! 

Then, down the side of the mountain, at first, by 
rock-hewn steps, towards Petra ; and again among the 
shepherds. Here, on a beautiful green space among 
the rocks, I purchased the very primitive double flute 
which a skin-clad satyr was most musically playing ; 
and had my third draught of goat's-milk from the 
nymph he was playing to. Singling one out from the 
flock, off she bounded to catch the goat, and fill the 
can. Then, with the most amusingly savage suspicious- 
ness, she held out her right hand for the money, while 
in her left she kept back the cup. And as I looked 
into her wild black eyes, thinking of the joys and 
sorrows of life on Mount Hor, with a cave, a little 
flock, Pan's pipes, the kisses of such a nymph, and 
the prattle of her children, she, with true feminine 
craft, took advantage of my interest in her to make me 
pay very handsomely for my drink of milk. But here 
was a stage of Man's history I had never before seen — 
living in caves, clad in skins, and withal, piping in the 
most gladsome way, through the glorious sunny air. 
The Ojibbeway Indians, among whom I had travelled 
on the northern shores of Lake Huron and Lake 
Superior, had wigwams and canoes, and a gravity and 
dignity of aspect which raised them high above these 
wild men (and women) of Mount Hor. I was very 
much interested. They might still have some of the 
blood of; the aboriginal Horites, 1 whom the descendants 

1 Genesis xxxvi. 6-8; Deuteronomy ii. 12-22. 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



261 



of Esau are said to have succeeded ' when they had 
destroyed them, and dwelt in their stead.' 1 ISTay, 
more ; this skin-clad satyr and his nymph might very 
well represent my own respectable forefather and fore- 
mother of only perhaps 5,000 years ago, — though, 
indeed, at a much later period than that, the Kelts and 
the Germans may have been but little less advanced 
than these Horites. The milleniums had disappeared ; 
and I was back in primeval time. But too soon I was 
re-transported to the present, by finding my young 
forefather taking advantage of my reverie to pick my 
pocket. It was a useful piece of string he had filched. 
But he was my ancestor. So filial piety would not 
permit me to reclaim it. And presently Mr. Buckle 
and some of the others made their appearance on the 
little nook of greensward. 

Meeting our dromedaries at the foot of the moun- 
tain, we rode into Petra through its south-western 
Cemetery of rock-hewn tombs. And at length we 
encamped on a flowery platform under the rocks, above 
the ruined terraces of the river of Petra, and near the 
ruins of the only remaining structure in it, built instead 
of hewn. Behind, to the south, was the road from 
the high table-land of the Sutah Harun, or Aaron's 
Plains, and Mount Hor ; in front, to the north, a wide 
undulating space some two miles in circumference, from 
which you ascend to the Sutah Beida, or White Plains, 
and the Mount of Dibdiba. In the midst of this area, 

1 It would, at least, be interesting, if a competent scholar should 
note the differences of words and idioms in the Arabic spoken by the 
herdsmen of the Fellahin of Mount Hor. 



262 



PIL GRIM-MEM ORIES. 



Paet III. 



the site of the ancient city, is the river, or rather river- 
bed ; and some of the mounds are doubtless the ruins 
of the Forum, in which the philosopher Athenodorus, 
the friend of Strabo, met, in the reign of Augustus, 
many Eomans and other strangers residing here ; 1 
though it was not till the reign of Trajan (a.d. 105) 
that, with the whole of Arabia Petrsea, Eclom, and its 
ISTabathgean capital, was annexed to the Empire. 2 But 
it was on the right, and on the left, that appeared those 
remarkable features which had caused this place to be 
named, both in Hebrew and in Greek, 4 The Bock.' 3 
For there, in their gorgeous colours, were the famous 
excavated cliffs. On the face of that, away on the 
right, or to the east, were the columned portals of 
four excavated Temples (?), one of them now dis- 
tinguish as the Corinthian Tomb. On the road there- 
from to the south-east we shall pass to-morrow, the 
Theatre, excavated in the living rock, and seated for 
3,000 or 4,000 persons ; and thence we shall come, by 
the street of Tombs, to the Temple, now called the 
Khusne, its facade hewn out of the rose-coloured cliff, 
rising from among dark-green shrubs, and facing — 
what was thus at right anodes to our road from the 
Forum — the opening of that wonderful winding Sik, 
or 6 cleft,' 4 which, about two miles long, from ten to 
thirty feet wide, and overhung by perpendicular rocks 

1 Strabo, xvi. 4-21. 2 Dio Cas. lxviii. 

3 J7^p^ V Uerpa, later, ai Ukrpcu. 

4 'For/ said Sheykh Mohammed to Dean Stanley, 'as surely as Jebel 
Harim is so called from the burial-place of Aaron, is Wady Musa ; (the 
only name by which Petra is now known among the Arabs) 1 so called 
from the cleft being made by the rod of Moses when he brought the 
stream through into the valley beyond.' — Sinai and Palestine, p. 89. 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETE A. 



263 



from 100 to 300 feet 1 high, was the grand entrance 
into Petra. And up through the oleander bushes, 
under the templed (?) 2 western cliffs to the left of 
our northward-fronting encampment, we shall the day 
after, Sunday, as it happens, find our way to the re- 
mains of a rocky staircase, winding up the mountain 
some 1,500 feet, to that primeval sanctuary which, 
looking towards the Tomb of Aaron on Mount Hor, is 
now marked by the excavated Temple called Ed-Deir. 3 
After I had thus, from my reading, and my gazing, in 
the afternoon light, gained a general conception of the 
place, darkness fell over it. But soon the crescent 
moon arose over this wondrous Valley of Moses ; and 
the bases of the southern and western cliffs about the 
encampment glowed in the fitful brightness of the Arab 
fires. 

Next morning it seemed as if we should have no 
more than this general view of Petra. For the Sheykh 
of the Fellahin had departed, they said, vowing the 
murder of us all. But it was evident that, not only 
our dragoman, but all our Egyptian servants, would 
gladly have made us as frightened as themselves. 

1 Stephens, 500 to 1,000 ft. ; Irby and Mangles, 400 to 700 ft. ; 
Martineau, 100 to 700 ft. ; Legb, 200 to 500 ft. ; Robinson, 80 to 
250 ft, 

2 I would, considering tbe uncertainty on the subject, be understood 
as using this word in the most general sense, and as indicating an exca- 
vation of architectural pretensions, dedicated either to the worship of 
the gods, or the burial of the dead. 

3 Compare the descriptions of Strabo, xvi. 4-21, and of Pliny, H. N. 
\i. 28, sec. 32. The latter is so brief, but accurate, that I may cite it 
at length: — ' Deinde Nabathsei oppidum incolunt Petram nomine in 
convalle, paulo minus ii. mille passuuni amplitudinis, circumdatum 
montibus inaccessis anme interfluente.' 



264 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



Indeed, it was most amusing to see the unwilling gene- 
rosity with which our. poor cook, particularly, gave up 
whatever the pettiest Sheykh might do him the honour 
to fancy. It was thought prudent, however, to go all 
in a body to the Sik, armed, and with an escort. The 
various hazards of our life here led Mr. Buckle to 
make some remarks to me on Coincidences, or, in the 
most general sense, Luck, and the Theory of Averages. 
This was leading me to express some of those views on 
Co-existence, empirical and necessary, which I had 
been for long endeavouring to work clear. But some 
of the others came up ; and we had to look about us. 
What we saw in our walk up to the Khusne, there, and 
through the Sik, has been sufficiently described by 
other travellers. But at the end of the Sik we turned 
down a narrow ravine to the left, not hitherto, so far 
as I am aware, described, till we came to a vast cave, 
or rather tunnel, where it should seem as if the force 
that cleft the mountain had been successfully resisted. 
From this cavern the rest of the party returned as 
they had come. But Hamilton and I remained with 
two natives, in the hope of making some discovery, or 
meeting with some adventure. 

Through the other end of this dark sub-mountain 
gallery we passed again into the light, in a ravine 
similar to that by which we had approached. We 
wandered some way down this wady, which I have 
named in my notes the Glen of Flowers. But at 
length, letting Hamilton go on exploring, I sat down in 
the shade of a rock with one of our Horite savages, to 
whose ugliness I had taken a liking, and whom I had 



Chap. III. TO HEBRON BY FETRA. 2G5 



named Caliban. I was overpowered with the music, 
the music of colour that is the beauty of Petra. It is 
the grand finish of the symphony that burst first upon 
us on the shores of the Gulf of Akaba, coming down 
from the Glen of the Fountain. In the lights and 
shades that its windings throw on the gorgeous colours 
of the precipices of the Sik, the music of Petra attains 
its highest strain. But this afterpiece, this Glen of 
Flowers, toucht me, somehow T , even more. Perhaps it 
was because one more clearly saw life here, and enjoy- 
ment of each other. And the wonder of it was, the 
perfect harmony of this society, various as were the 
classes of its members. 

Whence was this ? Whence was it that, though 
flowers were here massed in such extraordinary wild 
luxuriance, the adjacent colours were either actually 
in perfect keeping ; or 3 if there was in any place a 
technical, there was nowhere a real ill-match ; nor 
here, in all this wild gathering of notes of every 
different colour, a single discord? How explain this 
perfect harmony of co-existence? How was it that 
these flowers were such, and so neighboured, that 
the waves of light reflected from them struck my 
eye, not as noise, but as music? How explain, or 
rather, how, with any clearness conceive that won- 
derful relation between external and internal motions, 
which is markt in consciousness as pleasure or as pain ? 
Is there, properly speaking, any explanation? Must 
not Science itself be founded on the hypothesis, not of 
an inexplicable First Impulse, but of inexplicable 
Ultimate Co-existences ? Life, we know, is impossible 



266 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pake III. 



without its External Conditions. But are these External 
Conditions, such as we know them, possible without the 
germs, at least, of Life ? Is Nature, indeed, only a 
Sequence ? Is it not also a System ? Is our Philo- 
sophy, therefore, to be only a Science of Evolution, 
and not also a Science of Co-existence ? And does not 
the harmony of the colours of these wild flowers, and 
our pleasurable perception of their harmony, present 
to us the ultimate phenomena of the Sciences of Nature 
and of Man, and the grand problem of the relation 
between Man and Nature, between Life and its 
Conditions, between the Consciousness and the 
Cosmos ? 

But this visual Music, this harmony between the 
objective and subjective, the external and internal, 
Nature and Man, seemed to me also a prophetic Ee- 
velation of the Future. For what distinguishes the 
Present ? What but discord ? Discord between what 
Man would fain believe, and what he certainly knows, 
of Nature ? And so, Nature is now to how many of 
us a bare and sterile promontory in a dark ocean ; or, 
if it bears flowers, their colours are all discordant ; 
even as these of this Petrsean Glen would be if set in 
a dim northern sunlight. But as, while the sun of the 
Orient is over them, there is no discord among the 
colours of the Glen of Flowers ; so Man will see but 
harmony, be conscious of but music, when over Nature 
has arisen the sun of a New Ideal. And, in the light 
of such a sun, not only will Nature seem to Man even as 
these colours now to me harmonious ; but, as these fair 
beings of this flower-peopled Glen are all themselves 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



207 



in harmony, so will men at length be among them- 
selves in the Commonwealth of Man. 

But Hamilton now .returned, reporting, however, 
that he had seen no signs either of ruins or excava- 
tions. So we went back, but by a different way, along 
the sides or crest of the ravine ; and then across the 
space before the opening of the Sik. Frequently sepa- 
rating and re-uniting, we climbed about in all direc- 
tions. But if we discovered staircases or excavations 
not previously ascended or visited by Europeans, we 
were not, in our brief exploration, fortunate enough to 
find anything different in general character from what 
had been already described. Some Fellahm came 
down upon us ; and, with a vast deal of noise and 
gesticulation, seemed as if they meant to carry out the 
threats of their Sheykh in the morning. However, we 
thought it best to go quietly on with our explorations, 
giving no heed to their menaces, and letting our own 
two savages deal with them. And Caliban was faith- 
ful ; partly because we had shared our lunch, and best 
of all, our flask, with him and his fellow, and we had 
understood him to say — 

' I'll swear upon that bottle to be thy true 
Subject, for the liquor is not earthly ; ' 

but partly also, no doubt, because we had previously 
let them see our weapons, and given them some playful 
illustrations of the power of the terrible Jinn, or 
demon, that inhabits the chambers of a little pocket 
revolver. 

The next clay, Sunday, was suitably devoted to 
visiting the Sanctuary of Petra (Ed-Deir), the Hol} T 



268 PILGRIM-MEMORIES. Part in. 



Place of Kadesh. 1 Mr. Buckle's limbs were wonder- 
fully stiff for a man barely forty, and Hamilton and I, 
either alternately, or occasionally together, supported 
him in the rough ascent. At a little landing-place of 
the mountain-staircase, under a niche in the walling 
rock, we had a long rest. It was Hamilton chiefly who 
held Mr. Buckle here in conversation. For he was a 
devout Eoman Catholic ; had difficulty in understand- 
ing how a man could get on without believing some- 
thing ; and was anxious to know what Mr. Buckle 
did beheve. On this, Mr. Buckle made a profession 
of his faith as a Deist. Hamilton, however, did not 
find a bare belief in a First Cause, retired from busi- 
ness, either sufficient or satisfactory. But especially 
are people bound to be polite to each other's Gods. 
And as this God of Mr. Buckle's was to me both intel- 
lectually incredible and emotionally detestable, I said 
nothing. Then Mr. Buckle went-off on the influence 
of Knowledge generally ; and, apropos of my Horite 
Caliban, who, — with his shock head of hair, and 
low cast of features, look altogether different, and 
speech also in some degree different, I believe, from 
that of the pure-bred Arabs we had hitherto known, 
— was lying, in his gross ignorance, at our feet, on a 

1 Sinai and Palestine, p. 08. The chief objection to Dean Stanley's 
hypothesis that this ancient sanctuary was the Kadesh which Dr. 
Robinson identifies with Ain-el-Weibeh, on the western side of the 
Arabah, appears to me to be this : If the Israelites were not permitted to 
pass through Edom, then, if Petra is Kadesh, it was not in Edom. Can 
this be maintained ? Petra was certainly, at least, within the natural 
frontier of Edom, whether defended as a part of it, or not. Compare 
Robinson, Biblical Researches, vol. ii. p. 582. And see now Palmer, 
Desert of the Exodus. 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



2G9 



lower step ; he declared, with disdain, that ' vice was 
better than ignorance.' 

Nothing, as I lookt at them, could have been finer 
than the contrast between Mr. Buckle and Hamilton ; 
and that, all the more, because of the bond of real 
friendliness between them. For Hamilton had, I be- 
lieve, a feeling of as sincere respect, and almost affec- 
tion, for Mr. Buckle, as I had. But such declarations 
as the last, for instance, were so incomprehensible, in 
any sense whatever, to Hamilton, that he only laugh t 
at them as he might have done at good jokes. Then,, 
those professions of fear with which men, like Mr. 
Buckle, sometimes laugh at their bodily weakness, 
seemed to Hamilton in the highest degree humorous.. 
But then, Hamilton was in the vigorous health of five- 
and-twenty, which will face anything, and eat anything. 
He had, as a good Catholic, exorcised the fiends of 
doubt, and thus saved himself the conquests of the 
thinker ; but he had led forlorn-hopes to the deadly 
breach in the Indian Mutiny. Each had, perhaps, a 
touch of contempt for the other, because of the want 
of that on which each prided himself. But each was 
thus to the other an unconscious flattery. And so they 
were excellent good friends. 

The High Place of Kadesh, the primeval Sanctuary, 
still indicated, like that of Serbal, by the inscriptions in 
the so-called Sinaitic character, is, indeed, a Holy Place. 
The comparatively modern facade of the excavated 
Temple is in the usual debased Eoman style. But 
there is no debasement in the aspects of Nature. In 
front of the Temple is a wide area ; opposite, a caverned 



270 PILGRIM-MEMORIES. Paet III. 

hill ; ascending which, you come on a little grassy plain, 
marked by a large oval, where sacred games would 
seem to have been celebrated. The grandeur of the 
precipices down which you look, and of the mountain 
scenery around, is felt to be indescribable. Wandering 
away alone with Caliban, I got to the face of a precipice 
fronting Mount Hor, and sitting down on a ledge of it, 
stayed there a long time. For it was well worth trying 
to understand, by getting some sympathetic insight 
into, the causes, and the significance of this primeval, 
and one might almost say universal, worship on High 
Places. 

Sunk in idolatrous, that is to say, formal, and 
licentious rites, this worship may, in the time of the 
Hebrew Prophets, have been ; though one cannot, on 
such a subject, trust the representations of narrow, 
one-sicled, and fanatical Jews. But as the worship on 
High Places was a primeval, will it not be an ultimate 
worship ? Constantly, in the history of Development, 
both individual and general, do we see this return to 
an earlier stage, but in a higher, and more complex 
form. And what true worship now exists among those 
who have realised what Law means, and have forsworn 
the cant that implies Miracle ; what true worship is 
henceforth likely to exist in the higher grades of 
Humanity, but the worship on High Places? Con- 
currently with the development of the conception of 
Law, that is to say, of Mutual, as opposed to External 
or Supernatural, Determination, there has been, among 
those Western nations whose mental history has been a 
conflict between native Aryan and foreign Semitic 



Chai>. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



271 



conceptions, a prolonged attempt to maintain against, 
or, at least, side by side with, the Greek conception of 
Law, the Jewish notion of a Personal God. But the 
results of the attempts in this direction of the greatest 
of modern thinkers, Kant and Hegel, only show their 
futility. 1 And to my mind, it is not merely the widen- 
ing of the intellectual conception of Law, but even 
still more, the breadthening of the moral capacity of 
Love that destro}^s the notion of a Personal God. 

Wonderful is the incoherency of belief in a period 
of Transition ! Wonderful the shortsightedness of those 
interested in maintaining an established creed ! Won- 
derful the complacency with which they saw through 
the branch on which they are astride ! A Personal 
God is truly and permanently believable by men in 
whom the ideas of Law and of Justice have been 
largely developed, only if such a scheme as that of 
Christianity is believed. One of the causes, indeed, of 
the Christian scheme will, in a scientific explanation of 
the origin of it — an explanation, that is, founded on 
psychological principles. — be shown to have been the 
necessity of reconciling the Semitic notion of a Per- 
sonal God with the moral consciousness developed by 
Greek Ethics and Eoman Jurisprudence. But if the 
Biblical account of the introduction of Evil into the 
world, and of the supernatural interference of God for 
the Eedemption of Man, is not believed in ; how, by 

1 See Stirling, Secret of Hegel. Truly, as he says, the great aim of 
German thought has been to establish belief in God and Immortality. 
And, so far as showing the co-existence of Thought with Nature can do 
it, that aim has been, in no slight degree, accomplished. But a personal 
God and a personal Immortality are quite different things. 



272 



PIL GRIM- MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



those who dare to face the fact of Evil uninterfered 
with, is belief possible in a Personal God, ex hypothesi 
both almighty and beneficent ? As to the hypothesis 
that this Being is not almighty, it is simply the hypo- 
thesis that he is not really a God, or a God limited by an 
independent Evil Principle or Devil. It is a mystery, 
yon reply, which we cannot solve, but yet a fact which 
we must believe. Unquestionably, this would be so, 
were it absolutely certain that the book, from which we 
derive this rotion, contains a Supernatural Eevelation. 
We found, however, at the Mount of God, that the 
e divine Legation ' of Moses could not be believed as, 
in any clear sense, supernatural. But if not, what 
becomes of the supernatural character of the Bible? 
And if the Bible is not true in its supernatural myths, 
as well as in its natural facts, what becomes of the truth 
of that scheme by which alone the Conscience can be 
reconciled to belief in a Personal God ? What becomes 
of the authority of the Revelation by which alone we 
can be constrained to a belief which, without a Christ, is 
revolting to the heart, and baseless to the reason ? 1 

Atheist, then ? Miserable calumny ! Yet shall I 
equivocate in a matter so serious ? If, by Atheism is 
meant disbelief in a God, whose personality is, philo- 
sophically, a self-contradiction ; a God, whose inter- 
ference is refuted by the ever-increasing knowledge of 
Law; a God, whose non-interference would, if he 

1 As to Mr. Herbert Spencer's 1 Unknowable Reality' and that 
1 Cosmic Theism ' of bis disciple, Mr. Fiske, which professes to 1 adore ' 
an unconscious, impersonal, and unmoral God, I need here but say that 
it rests on theories which I agree with Mr. J. S. Mill and Prof. Bain in 
thinking altogether unsound. 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETE A. 



278 



existed, be cursed by the ever-increasing sympathy 
with Sentient Existence, then, to speak plainly, this 
is Atheism. But Atheist, one who thus disbelieves in 
a Personal God, is not ; Atheist, he no more is than 
any one of those, his predecessors, who have been 
honoured with this name, because from their larger 
knowledge, and wider love, they abjured the Gods 
of the multitude, the idols of superstition ; Atheist, 
one thus disbelieving, is not, if belief in God 
means a feeling unutterable of the mystery of Exist- 
ence, a feeling too deep of the spirituality of Nature, 
and of the universal co -existence of what we distin- 
guish by the correlative terms of Matter and Mind, a 
feeling too profound of the Cosmos to satisfy itself 
with belief in a merely mechanical First Cause ; 
Atheist, one thus disbelieving, is not, if belief in God 
means belief in Conscience, belief in Progress as the 
triumph of truth and justice, and belief in Duty as 
the obligation — the fulfilment of which carries with 
it its own reward — the obligation to devote oneself to 
contributing what one may to such triumph ; Atheist, 
one thus disbelieving, is not, if his feelings and beliefs 
are such as to make him find the fountains of his life 
in worship on High Places. 

On returning to the tents, I found hundreds of 
Arabs in and about the encampment, and the whole 
afternoon was spent in a running series of petty quar- 
rels and skirmishes between the various tribes of 
Bedawin, and between these and the Eellahin. Towards 
sunset there was a lull, — the calm only before the 
storm. Caliban was the first actor in this fresh out- 

T 



274 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



burst. I saw him run, gesticulating and exclaiming, 
across the camp ; and rushing from every quarter, the 
Arabs seemed all about to give themselves the satis- 
faction, at last, of a free fight. But, down into the thick 
of the fray, sprang, sword in hand, the Conqueror of 
Petra, Suleiman Abd-el-Ghazee. I followed him, and 
found the whole cause of the row was only Caliban's 
having been suspected, and punished on suspicion, of 
interfering with a camel of another tribe. The sun 
was now setting behind red fleecy clouds ; and the tem- 
pled rocks, wailing the green and flowery mounds of 
the old City, and the Pilgrims' Camp, had, eastward, 
their various colours lit up into splendour, and west- 
ward, gorgeously darkened. Yet, all unseen were the 
fair heavens. The Sheykh of the Fellahin reproached 
the Conqueror for e not plucking the pigeons he had got 
in his cage.' Suleiman, true to his treaty with us, swore 
by the divorce of his wife, that, if the Fellahin insulted 
any of the Christians, he would exterminate them with- 
out mercy. On this, one of Abd-el-Ghazee's own 
fanatical relatives rushed on him from behind, and in 
another moment he would have been shot through the 
back. But the Conqueror suddenly turning, seized and 
threw up the gun ; and Abd-el-Atee, one of the drago- 
men, fortunately at hand, tripped up the fanatic, who 
was quickly bound, and carried off under guard to a tem- 
porary prison. Had that shot taken effect, we should, 
judging from the excitement and fanaticism of the 
Arabs, hardly have escaped being all murdered. 

Next morning, our Egyptian servants drew the 
tent-pegs, and packed the baggage with devout thank- 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY BETH A. 



275 



fulness. Petra was to them but a robber's den. And 
not yet were we out of it. There was yet another 
row that, for a moment, looked serious. But while 
things were getting settled, Mr. Buckle declared Petra 
to be 4 as wonderful, and far more beautiful, than any- 
thing he had seen in Egypt.' I could hardly agree 
with him. Infinite as I had felt the beauty of Petra to 
be, there was not the mind here that there was in 
Egypt ; and there are orders of infinitudes. Still, I 
left Petra with even more regret than Egypt. For 
innumerable historical, artistic, and ethnological ques- 
tions connected with Idumsea rose up in my mind, what 
it would take as many months in Edom, as we had 
spent days of exploration, to throw satisfactory light 
upon. 

At length the great Sheykh himself rode to the 
front to conduct us to the Arabah, the frontier of his 
dominions. Suleiman Abd-el-Ghazee was a thick-set 
man, rather under the middle height, with a Jewish 
face, large nose and mouth, thick lips, black, grey- 
streaked beard, and slow, dark eyes, with an expression 
of great intelligence, cautious determination, and re- 
morseless vigour. The ordinary Arabs of the Desert 
wear but a single short garment like a shirt ; but this 
great Sheykh was clad in various robes of yellow-and- 
green-striped silk, of crimson, and of blue. The gay- 
coloured silk Kefiyeh of the Bedawin covered his head 
and neck, and shadowed his face. His naked legs were 
in red-leather boots, beneath wide blue breeches. A 
lon^ gun was sluno- at his back : a silver-scabbarded 
sword was by his side ; pistols and daggers in his 

T 2 



276 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part m. 



waist-shawl. He was mounted on a beautiful white 
Arab mare, which he guides lightly with one hand, up or 
down the rocky mountain-path, while the other holds 
his long pipe, like a Marshal's staff, resting on his thigh. 
It was with heartiness that I shook hands with him on 
parting ; and, looking into his eyes, I said, c I wished he 
might long keep what he had won, and see many more 
British travellers at the Valley of Moses ' — many more 
pilgrims also, I hoped, to the Holy Place of Kadesh. 

Encamping, the first night after leaving Petra, on 
the confines of the Arabah, the next two days were 
occupied in crossing it to the foot of the great moun- 
tain-pass of Safeh between Arabia and Palestine. There 
were, as usual, in this border-land, constant appre- 
hensions of an attack. Each evening the Arabs fired 
off their guns as a general defiance, and warning to all 
their friends within hearing that they had better not 
become foes. And on the morning of the second day, 
the challenge seemed to have been taken up. In the 
grey twilight a large body of men were descried ad- 
vancing in the distance. The baggage-camels were 
hastily collected, and driven away together to the rear 
of the camp ; and our brave Alawin mounted their 
dromedaries, and led by their Sheykhs on horseback, 
rushed to the charge. But the sun rose. And lo, 
the enemies were friends. It seemed to me a signi- 
ficant adventure. But the grey twilight of morn lasts 
long in the history of Humanity. 

On the morning of Thursday, the 10th of April, 
we ascended the high and difficult pass of Safeh, gene- 
rally identified with that down which the Canaanites 



Chai*. III. TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 277 



chased the Israelites 4 as bees do, and destroyed them 
in Seir even unto Hormah.' 1 Dismounting at the top, 
where the ravine ends and is commanded by an unoc- 
cupied fort, we took our last look of the valley of the 
Arabah, and the mountains of Petra. We then com- 
menced on foot the rocky descent to the ' Desert of the 
South,' the threshold of Palestine. And at lunch in the 
shade of a shittim-tree, at the northern foot of the 
pass, Mr. Buckle was particularly brilliant, joke and 
anecdote following each other fast. For our six weeks 
in the Desert were almost at an end ; before us, were 
the green rolling plains of Judsea ; over all, was the 
splendour of an Eastern Sun ; in the flowers, in the birds, 
in the flocks and herds at the wells we should soon see 
the fulness of young life ; and soon, at Hebron, we should 
hear again the much-loved din of Civilisation. Besides, 
Palestine was not to Mr. Buckle a ' Holy Land.' There 
was, therefore, both in the matter and manner of his 
conversation here, something, perhaps, of a protest 
against the ordinary Judseo-Christian way of feeling, 
or at least speaking, about one's first setting foot in the 
little Jewish cantons of the province of Syria. And 
similar was this implicit protest to that of which Mr. 
Kinglake's 6 Eothen ' was the first, and is still the most 
brilliant expression. 

The ordinary philosophical conversation of our 
forenoons having been impossible to-day, when we had 
so carefully to look to our feet on the bare and shelvy 
limestone of the Pass, we had it in the afternoon. After 
some remarks by Mr. Buckle on Kant as the Copernicus 

1 JDeut. i. 44. Compare Num. xiv. 4o. 



278 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



of Metaphysics, I submitted to him that, as it seemed to 
me, Kant was to be completed by that development 
of the principle of Keciprocity to which we are led 
by the new physical principle of the Conservation 
of Energy. For, in its fall development, as I had 
so often said, this principle of Conservation would, 
I thought, be stated as a principle of Co-existence, 
or Mutual Determination. And if such a principle 
were established, we should, among other results, 
certainly be led to a modification, at least, of some of 
the conceptions and expressions of our present Logic ; 
if not also, as I thought, to a new and complementary 
Logic. Eagerly Mr. Buckle seized on the suggestion, 
and said that he also had been led to the conception of 
a possible, and hence necessary new Logic ; but this, 
not as I had been, but by reflexion on the distinctive 
character of the present Logic as a Logic of Sequence ; 
and he added that this was one of the thoughts which he 
most desired to have leisure for working-out. I was glad 
that he had been led to a thought similar to my own, 
and by a route so different, as I could not but think 
that there was, in such a fact, some evidence that our 
present Logic is really as incomplete as I had been 
led to consider it. And if our Logic is incomplete, so 
also must be our Method. Conversely, the completion 
of our Logic will be the completion of our Method. And 
a complete Method would be the fundamental, only 
true, and organic reconciliation of Idealism and Mate- 
rialism. With the thought of such a possibility one 
could not but experience a certain ideal exultation. 
But we now suddenly became aware of the tents close 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETE A. 



279 



below us in a little hollow, whence fumes of cookery 
were pleasantly ascending. 

After dinner, sitting with our cigars under the 
starry heavens, our conversation again turned on the 
two great opposed schools of Philosophy. And Mr. 
Buckle, just as he had before inveighed against the 
immorality of Poets, recalled, with delighted memory, 
the various stories of the immorality of Idealist, as 
compared with Materialist Philosophers, from Plato 
downwards. I disagreed with him, as before, as to the 
justness of the standard of his moral judgments. But 
I suggested the collecting of evidence respecting the 
physical and moral characteristics of the philosophers 
of these two Schools respectively, and both of the 
Indian and European developments of Aryan Thought. 
This was just the sort of thing for Mr. Buckle highly 
to approve. I thought that the characteristic differ- 
ence between Idealists and Sensationalists, or Scep- 
tics, would probably thus be shown to consist in 
the profounder moral sympathy of the former. This, 
of course, would depend on a certain quality, and on 
certain relations, of the parts of the brain, and, there- 
with, of the whole body ; and this again, on heredi- 
tary, hence planetaiy, and even cosmical causes. And 
then, I suggested, if there w T ere thus found to be a re- 
lation between the physical and moral characteristics 
of the man, and the idealist or materialist principles of 
his philosophy, should we not be led to some theory 
of a relation, through such physical characteristics of 
philosophers, between changing planetary conditions 
and the principles of successive philosophies ? On Mr. 



/ 



280 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



Buckle's demurring, 4 Well,' said I, e it is but a sudden 
thought, or fancy, if you will ; and one is, not unna- 
turally, perhaps, made fanciful under these heavens of 
Orient splendour, and on these plains of Patriarchal 
memories. But is there not this, at least, of truth in 
the suggestion, — that there is, in fact, a relation be- 
tween the physical condition of the Planet, hence, of the 
Solar System, and hence, infinitesimally, at least, of the 
Cosmos, and the development of the human Conscious- 
ness ? And if so, then there was a certain truth, after 
all, in the old Astrology. For was not their conception 
of a relation between the planets and human fates thus 
false only in the form of its expression ? That was a 
serious error certainly. But it is no small thing to be 
capable of any great synthetic conception. Besides, 
Syntheses which connect things with each other, instead 
of with outside " Gods," are ever essentially scientific. 
And so, an old master of Chaldsean lore might, notwith- 
standing his unverified hypothesis of individual plane- 
tary influences, be more largely scientific in his con- 
ceptions than many a modern discoverer of some small 
scientific fact.' 1 

Our Desert-journey was now drawing to a close, for 
the next night but one we expected to be at Hebron. 
I remarked on its wonderful physical variety, and may 
here give a retrospect of it, from a letter written this 
evening to my mother : — 4 Like Egypt, and all things 

1 ' Car, une fois qn'on admettait les chimeriques principes relatifs aux 
influx et aux prognostics, les predictions astrologiques avaient habituelle- 
ment un caractere aussi scientifique que les calcules astronomiques d'ou 
elles resultaient.' — Phil. Pos. t. vi. p. 246. 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETE A. 



281 



sublime, the Desert has ever the same simple charac- 
teristics ; but they are impressed on the consciousness, 
and the sublimity made felt by the variety in the forms 
of its presentation. There is a monotony of barrenness 
and desolation under the blue heavens ; but, in at least 
a score of characteristically different Wildernesses, have 
we clay after day ridden our dromedaries, and night 
after night pitched our tents. First, through a Desert 
which, like the Libyan, that eastern part of the Sahara, 
which bounds the Nile- valley on the west, is a rolling 
plain swept by a sleet of sand ; then, across passes, into 
valleys, wadys, like the dry beds of mountain-walled 
rivers or lakes ; then, the grand Desert of Serbal and of 
Sinai, its mountains peaked with towering jagged pre- 
cipices, looking down — the former, on the Wady-Feiran, 
the Paradise of the Bedawin, where are the ruins still 
of the ancient Christian city of Paran — the latter, on 
the Wady Eahah, the Yale of Eest, where the Israelites 
encamped before the Mount of God ; then, from Haze- 
roth, — where, according to the Biblical tradition, 
Miriam was smitten with leprosy, and the people were 
first miraculously fed with quails, and then, by thou- 
sands, miraculously again, made food of for vultures, — 
from Hazeroth, through the beautiful Glen of the 
Fountain, with its too-easily counted palms and tama- 
risks, and through the almost equally beautiful, though 
wider and less precipitously walled, Wady Wetir, down 
to the beach of the Gulf of Akaba, or of Elath, up 
whose now unploughed waters the fleets of Solomon 
brought the gold of Ophir and the spices of Hind ; 
then, along that glorious shore, intoxicated with the 



282 



VIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part. III. 



colour-music of its shell-and-coral-strewn beach aud 
walling rocks, its pebbles, like a pavement of gems 
beneath the pellucid waters, and, — giving variety to 
what might otherwise be too monotonous a splen- 
dour, — with mountains ever running out into the 
sea, forming passes to be crossed, or with difficulty 
rounded ; then, from the wave-kissed palm-grove of 
Akaba, in which, for many days, our tents were un- 
struck, up the Arabah, the Wilderness of Zin, the long 
Desert-plain between the Dead Sea and that Akaban 
Gulf which is a finger, as it were, of the Indian Ocean ; 
then, the eternal music of the gorgeously- coloured 
mountains of Edom ; then, by another pass, back into 
the Arabah, here wider, more hilly, and less like the 
bottom of a gulf of the Sea than further south, near 
Akaba ; and then, finally, by another, highest and 
most difficult pass of all, into that wide undulating plain 
of the " Wilderness of Judah," " the south country," 
or " Desert of the South," where, from the times of the 
Semitic Patriarchs, there has been strife for the infre- 
quent Wells, — the Desert where our tents are now 
pitched, and I am this evening writing to you.' Such 
had been the wonderful physical variety of the Deserts 
which, in scarce six weeks, with all our stoppages, we 
had journeyed through. 

At length, on Friday, the 11th of April, we had 
certainly crossed the shifting frontier of 6 The South,' 
and on Sunday, Palm-Sunday, we should be in Jerusa- 
lem. Now, we could feel ourselves to be truly in 
Palestine. And Palestine is the chief of the birth- 
countries of that religion which, for at least fifteen 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBE OX BY PETE A. 



283 



centuries, has so profoundly influenced Western Civili- 
sation, and been,, in particular, as old Coke says, ; part 
and parcel of the Common Law of England.' Yet, 
that such Christianity will, in the future, and even in 
the near future, not be is almost certain. And 
though it is only a largely verified Law of History that 
could enable us, on clear scientific grounds, to predict 
this ; yet no inconsiderable grounds for such a predic- 
tion are undoubtedly afforded by the present thoroughly 
anti-Christian movements in reference to Marriage and 
the Eights of Women. 1 

Starting with such remarks, all the morning we 
were talking of that project of a 4 History of British 
Law ; ' — of such a Beeves as would be a fitting intro- 
duction to a Code, and so aid, at least, in the realisation 
of Bacon's dream of a Magna Instauratio Legum 
Anglice ; — that project of a ' History of British Law,' 
which had more especially led to my proposing to 
myself the discovery of an Ultimate Law of History 
as the aim of my general philosophical, and historical 
studies. For it soon became clear to me that a History 
of Law could not be proceeded with, except under the 

1 1 Canon Law in no one particular departs so widely from the spirit 
of secular jurisprudence, as in the view it takes of the relations created 
by marriage. This was in part inevitable, since no society which preserves 
any tincture of Christian institution is likely to restore to married women 
the personal liberty conferred on them by the middle Roman Law . . . 
and it is by the tendency to keep alive and consolidate the personal in- 
capacity of married females that the expositors of the Canon Law have 
deeply injured civilisation.'' — Maine's Ancient Law, p. 158. And so Mr. 
Lecky remarks that 1 there is probably no other branch of [modern] 
ethics which has been so largely determined by special dogmatic theo- 
logy/ as that which treats of the relations of the sexes ; and he adds that 
1 there is none which would be so deeply affected by its decay.' — His- 
tory of European Morals, vol. ii. pp. 371-2. 



284 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



guidance of some generalisation from the correlative 
History of Thought. Now the best established, and, 
for the purpose, the most important of such generalisa- 
tions, seemed to be that contained in the idea of the 
Modern Eevolution ; the idea, that is, of the period 
since the Eeformation, as one of Transition, and of our 
age as being near the close of such a period. The chief 
aim, therefore, I thought, of a scientific 4 History of Bri- 
tish Law ' should be to verify and illustrate this general- 
isation in the exposition of the various changes of the 
Laws of Scotland, and of England, in relation, on the 
one hand, to the laws and principles of the Feudal 
System, gradually abolished or evaded ; and, on the 
other hand, to the laws and principles of the New Social 
System gradually introduced by legislative acts or judi- 
cial fictions. But the immediate realisation of the 
project was found impossible, from the vagueness, or 
unsatisfactoriness, as yet, (and notwithstanding both 
Hegel and Comte), of this idea of the Modern Eevolu- 
tion, and of our present historical period as one of 
Transition. For one can attach no really clear and 
definite meaning to the phrase, 4 Age of Transition,' 
unless one has a grasp of both its ends. One requires, 
therefore, for such a 4 History of British Law ' as would 
be really an adequate scientific introduction to a Code, 
to have a firm grasp, not only of the principles of the 
Catholico-Feudal System of the Past, but of the New 
Social System of the Future. In order, however, to 
this, a more fully and clearly verifiable Lav/ of History 
than either Comte's or Hegel's must be discovered, and 
one capable, at once, of interpreting the Past and pre- 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



285 



dieting the Future. And hence, this first definitely 
conceived literary project had been abandoned, or, at 
least, postponed, till such an Ultimate Law of History 
should be discovered. That such a project of a 
' History of British Law ' has certain relations to Mr. 
Buckle's of a 6 History of Civilisation in England ' is 
evident. For Law is one of the main phenomena of 
Civilisation, 1 and a history of it might, indeed, embrace 
all included in a history of Civilisation. Both projects 
also were founded on the conviction of the necessity of 
first establishing certain general historical Laws as the 
preliminary to any scientific history of Civilisation. 
My dispute with Mr. Buckle was simply as to the 
adequacy, or indeed, reality, except in a very limited 
application, of the Laws he had affirmed. But though 
I have a vivid general recollection of this discussion, I. 
regret that I have no special notes of Mr. Buckle's 
remarks. 

But as we advanced, the continuation of such dis- 
cussions became impossible. For the sudden choruses 
. of the glad springtide ; the music of birds and of 
flowers in sweetest harmonies of colour and of song ;. 
the green rolling breadth of Patriarchal pasture-lands 
through which we rode or walked ; and the historical 
ages so remote, and, in a high Humanitarian, if not 
narrow Christian sense, certainly so sacred, with which 

1 In that Classification of the Sciences which I have, since this 
Eastern journey, worked-out, the History of Law, or Nomogenetic, forms 
the third constituent science of the general historic science of Civilisa- 
tion, or Poligenetic, the others being the History of Morals, or Etlio- 
genetic, and the History of Industry, or Erg a genetic. See In the Morning- 
land. 



286 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part III. 



we were brought face to face, could not but, at length, 
have their due effect in the emotions of a clay never to 
be forgotten. Towards noon, we came down into a 
valley in which were two great built wells ; (the larger 
of the two, twelve feet in diameter, and forty-four feet 
to the surface of the water ;) and we halted for some 
time beside them. A number of Arabs were here, as 
might have been, of old, the legendary Abraham, or 
Isaac, or Jacob, watering their flocks and herds. 
About the wells also were being played, as from of old, 
the wanton games of springtime. And ' Lucius,' Mr. 
Buckle's donkey, who had been for six weeks in the 
Desert without seeing one of his kind, — regardless 
of the presence of ladies, in his seizure with the mad- 
ness that, much, more truly than the mistaken magic 
of his mistress, transformed the lover of Fotis. 1 
— rushed off with loud cries to participate in the 
games. But both sides of Life must be seen and felt, 
or, in the eternal oneness of the Material and the Ideal, 
there is no realisation of the truth of Existence. And 
so, a sacred Past was to me brought home with but , 
more fulness and vividness of truth by this its associa- 
tion with a humourous Present. But we journeyed 
on. And at night — the last with our camels in the 
Desert — the camp lay in the radiance of moonlight ; 
but with sentinels posted against a not improbable 
attack of hostile Arabs. 

rTo discussion do I find noted the next day ; but there 
was not, on that account, less thought. For Palestine 
ceases not to be a Holy Land, because, as the result 

1 See Apuleius. Metamorphoses, lib. iii.j 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



287 



of our wanderings in the Desert of Criticism, the 
Children of Abraham are found to have been no 
4 Peculiar People : ' their Patriarchs, Prophets, and 
Saints, to have had no supernatural inspiration, or 
personal communing with the Infinite in shape of angel 
or of man ; and their Eeligion to have been no 6 divine 
revelation.' As the first great Ocean-sailors, — who, 
rather than the wandering Israelites, are the worthiest 
types of the Thinker and the Scholar in this age, — 
not only discovered new lands, but found that all 
lands were parts of one starry home ; so they who 
now wander forth on the Desert of Criticism, and 
boldly journey ever forward to the end, bring us 
intelligence which destroys, indeed, for ever the 
superstition of Isolation, but substitutes for it the 
religion of Oneness ; the sacred knowledge and belief 
of the oneness in past sequence, and in future co- 
existence, of the parts of Humanity. And as we found 
the terrors of Sinai, not in barbaric fancies of the Lord 
having come down on it, but in human agonies and 
ecstasies caused by false beliefs regarding it ; so, Pales- 
tine, — that little hill-district of Syria, ' Aram ' or the 
4 Highlands,' which separate the eastern shores of the 
Mediterranean from the western plains of Asia, — is holy 
to us, not because of God, but because of Man. It is 
holy, because of heroic lives of faith, most human 
though the men were, and only made fit subjects of 
Voltairian ridicule by the pretension that they were 
aught else ; — holy, because of the holiness it has been 
believed to possess ; holy, because of traditions of 
Humanity that are among the most ancient and beauti- 



288 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet III. 



ful that have come clown to us. And what, if to them 
of old time the Infinite appeared not as now to us ? It 
is the very condition of our finite existence that, in the 
outstretching of our hands to the Infinite, we conceive 
it, if conceive it we will, in but forms that take their 
shape from our too impatiently overdosing hands. 

All this forenoon a band of robbers hung round, 
hesitating whether they should not boldly sweep down 
on us. But both on their part, and on that of our 
Arab escort, prudence was thought the better part of 
valour, and ive agreed to buy them, and they to be 
bought off. And the country, thus socially still like 
what the Scottish Border once was, is, in physical 
features, wonderfully like what I had found it in my 
Arthurian wanderings, — only the black tents, here and 
there, of the Arabs were larger and better than those 
of the Scottish Gipsies. On the sides of the little hill, 
on the summit of which we lunched, I observed both 
thistles and oats , and besides the palm, the oleander, 
and the prickly pear, everywhere one noted the com- 
mon wild-flowers and weeds of the North, — the poppy 
and the whitebriar, the cyclamen, the bindweed, and 
the thorn. Soon, however, we came to cleared fields 
and stone dykes, and entered, at length, the valley of 
Eschol, with sides running from north to south, and 
clothed, as of old, with vineyards, orchards, and olive- 
groves. And ever continuing our gentle ascent from 
the Desert till we were nearly 2,800 feet above the 
sea, we came, at length, to Hebron, El Khulil, 
(The City of) ' the Friend ' (of God), Kirjath-Arba, the 
City of Arba, the father of Anak, the progenitor of 



Chap. III. 



TO HEBRON BY PETRA. 



289 



the Anakim. 1 Chiefly built on the eastern, it has a 
suburb on the western side of the valley, and its main 
eastern quarter is surmounted by the massive and lofty 
walls 2 of the Haram, or Sanctuary, within which is 
the Mosque, over the sepulchres supposed to be those 
of the Semitic Patriarchs. 

Here, then, early in the afternoon of a glorious 
spring-day, the 12th of April, we encamped on a green 
space on the western hill opposite the Haram. The 
country round about is that in which those legendary 
Chaldsean shepherds, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the 
4 Hebrews,' or men 4 of the passage ' of the Eu- 
phrates, longest pitched their tents, and fed their flocks 
and herds. Hebron was also the seat of David's 
government while king of Judah, and before he became 
king of all Israel ; and one of the great wells is still 
named the 4 King's Pool.' And the country thus of 
the earliest history of Judaism, it is that also of the 
earliest history of Christianity. For if Hebron is not 
the very city in the hill-country of Judaea in which the 
Forerunner of Christ was born, it was but at two short 
hours' distance to the south. 3 Such were the historical 
associations of the place. But strange were the streets 
and their din of Civilisation after our six weeks in the 
Desert ; strange, but not unpleasant. For the beauty 
of the women was that of houris, and of the children, 
that of cherubs. In the evening, much business had 
to be transacted round the Arab council-fires, for we 

1 Judges xxi. 2. 

2 Fifty or sixty feet high, and with stones some of them twenty feet 
in length. 

3 Jatta. See Robinson, Biblical Researches, i. 494, and ii. 20G. 

U 



290 PILGRIM-MEMORIES. Part III. 

here parted with our dromedaries and camels, and 
engaged horses and mules. But above all other noises, 
there rose, from the cemetery near us, a sad and 
piercing wailing. Nor did such vespers seem without 
a certain significance, as our first night in a city of the 
Holy Land closed-in, and especially after a Desert- 
journey of such thought and discussion as that by 
Petra to Hebron. 



PAET IV. 
PALESTINE. 



293 



CHAPTEE I. 

TEE SEPULCHRE OF GOV. 

OtfCE more alone, — having bid farewell to the parties of 
the Petra-caravan with whom we had journeyed from 
the Gulf of Akaba, — we left Hebron on the morning of 
Palm Sunday, and, mounting now horses for the first 
time in the East, we rode past the so-called Oak of 
Mamre, — a grand old tree, twenty-three feet round the 
lower part of the trunk, standing quite alone in the 
midst of vineyards, and with a well of clear water close by, 
— and took the ancient road — last repaired, apparently, 
by the Komans, — to Jerusalem. We past Kamet-el- 
Khulil, which, if not the true site of the Oak of Abraham, 
should seem to be the place where, in the earlier cen- 
turies of our era, the tree thus called stood ; where both 
Christians and Heathens joined in the worship of it; 
and where, after their final overthrow at Bether, 
a.d. 135, thousands of Jewish prisoners were knocked 
down as slaves to the highest bidder. For three hours 
from this place, we ride across narrow valleys with 
remains everywhere of terraces now neglected, and 
over the broken ridges of hills covered with dwarf-oaks, 
arbutus, and other shrubs, till, surmounting another 
low ridge, we look down on a broad valley in the 
midst of which is a large rectangular building, a castle, 



294 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



probably, of the Saracens, below which, where the 
valley begins to contract, are three immense tanks, in a 
line one below the other — the Pools of Solomon. ' I 
made me great works ; I builded me houses ; I planted 
me vineyards ; I made me gardens and orchards, and 
I planted trees in them of all kinds of fruits ; I made 
me pools of water, to water therewith the wood that 
bringeth forth trees.' 1 

Here, under the gratefully shadowing walls, we 
rested for some time, getting into a discussion again on 
the Summum Bonum, the Highest Good. And this was 
still continued as, on remounting, we rode across an 
elevated tract, looking down, on the left, on a beautiful 
vale ; and then, up a rocky slope past the Tomb where 
Eachel ' was buried on the way to Ephrath, which is 
Bethlehem,' now in sight, and scarcely a mile distant on 
its vine-and-olive-terraced ridge ; and then, amid a wild 
landscape of glen and mountain ; and on, till we come 
at length to a steep hill, and reach the Convent of St. 
Elias, and Mr. Buckle exclaims — 4 Look, that must be 
Jerusalem ! ' ' Yes ! ' I said, ' but something very 
different from all that is to my mind typified by 
the City of the Great King will be that New Ideal, 
that Ideal of Co-existence, Mutual Determination, Co- 
oneness ; that ideal of Love which, in accordance with 
the verities of Science, not the fables of Superstition, 
will be, at length, acknowledged as the true Summum 
Bonum, and be, in fact, a New Eeligion.' 

But by Love, as the Summum Bonum, I meant, as 



1 Eccles. ii. 4, 5. 



Chai>. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



295 



I had before said, not merely subjective affection, but 
objective harmony. Nor did I mean by that word 
merely that affection of, or for an individual, which is 
seldom, except for moments, perfect or absolutely 
mutual ; almost always founded on illusion ; and never, 
perhaps, except in the case of a mother, quite pure, 
selfless, and beyond the reach of misunderstanding and 
change. Not the affection of which the object desired, 
and, at length, possessed, is the dc^poSirr] iravhiqiios, 
•Earthly Beauty, but that of which the object of desire 
and possession is the d^poSm? ovpavia. Heavenly 
Beauty ; that straining after, and consciousness of har- 
mony of relation with something out of, and above 
oneself, and insatiable save by such objects as God or 
Humanity ; that divine Want, personified by Diotima 
in the Symposium, as the Child of Poverty and Plenty ; 
the fearless, the vehement, and the strong, the hunter, 
the subtle sophist, and enchanter, — such Want, and its 
divine satisfaction, I desired to be understood by the 
word Love. 

Descending the rocky slope of Hinnom, we crossed 
the valley, and wound up a steep road under the walls 
of the citadel on Mount Zion. There we encountered 
a stream of bright-clothed peasants, with palm-branches 
in their hands returning from the Church of the Sepul- 
chre. And, riding past a crowd surrounding some 
dancers outside a coffee-shop, we passed, at length, 
under the archway of the Joppa Gate, and entered 
Jerusalem. 

But I was little in Jerusalem while staying here. 
For if a Creed can be embodied in a place, Jerusalem 



296 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



is the Creed of Christianity incarnate. For what is 
Christianity in its great orthodox doctrines, but a 
double Mount of Atonement and of Miracle, swept 
round by the valleys of Judgment and of Hell ? And 
see Jerusalem ! What are its great topographical 
features but the double Mount of Moriah and of Zion 
swept round by the valleys of Jehoshaphat and 
Gehenna ? Will not that double Mount, from its tra- 
ditions and associations, for ever symbolize Atoning 
Sacrifice and Supernatural Interference ? And, con- 
nected as these have, from the earliest times, been by a 
bridge, of which part of a colossal arch still remains ; as 
it is with type, so is it not also with antitype ? For does 
not the myth of the Incarnation bridge the reputed 
Mounts of the Abrahamic Miracle and the Holy Sepul- 
chre ? Is not the plain of Jehoshaphat the expected 
scene of the Last Judgment ; does it not even etymologi- 
cally signify ' Jehovah j udgeth ' ? And has not the name 
of the ravine of Gehenna come to be synonymous with 
the pit of Eternal Punishment ? And look at all the 
country round ! Is not its aspect even that of Society 
dominated by that Judseo-Osirianism which has become 
Christian Orthodoxy — the one as the other, bare, stony, 
and lifeless ? Opprest with the ideas which I thus saw 
here in actual visible embodiment, I felt the need all 
the time we were at Jerusalem of a freer atmosphere 
than that of its cruel superstition and narrow bigotry. 
And, for some hours almost every day, I got out of it, 
and out of sight of it, and alone. 

For during the whole of the Holy Week I had but 
little companionship or conversation with Mr. Buckle. 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



297 



And, when I was not alone, I was generally with my 
Eoman Catholic friend Hamilton, and a friend of his 
whose society was to me not only very pleasant, but very 
interesting — a bare-footed friar of the Franciscan Con- 
vent of St. Salvator. Mr. Buckle especially studied, as 
he wrote home from here, 4 the state of society and the 
habits of the people.' 1 So, once when he had lagged 
behind, near the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, as we 
were on our way by the Via Dolorosa, and St. Stephen's 
Gate, to the Garden of Gethsemane, he came up 
apologizing for having kept me waiting, but elated with 
having, in bargaining with a Jew about some glass- 
bracelets, beat him clown from twopence to three half- 
pence ; and as the Jew was always cheating in the 
court of the Church, even as his forefathers in that 
of the Temple, I could not refrain from saying that, 
' while going to Gethsemane, I had no eye for glass- 
bracelets.' Again, sitting on the Mount of Olives, 
and over against Jerusalem, overlooking that grassy 
area and marble platform from which now rises, in 
glittering splendour, the Mosque of Omar, the Dome of 
the Bock ; but on which, crowning the ridge of Mount 
Moriah, the Temple stood when Jesus, even, as is 
believed, where Ave now were, discoursed to his dis- 
ciples of the trouble that would come upon them for 
his name's sake, 2 and where he is also believed to have 
given, them the parable of the Ten Virgins and the 
Five Talents ; 3 — sitting on this sacred spot without Jeru- 
salem, I found it impossible to enter on the discussion, 



1 Biograph. Notice, Miscel. and PostJi. Works, vol. i. 

2 Matt. xxiv. 3 Matt. xxv. 



298 



TIL G RIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



lie attempted to start, of a certain unsettled question of 
Political Economy. 

So, I was generally alone in my walks here, and 
especially in the almost daily one down from Mount 
Zion, and, by the Via Dolorosa, across the ridge of 
Mount Moriah, and out of the City, by the gate of St. 
Stephen, the Protomartyr, whence, turning to the left, 
I went clown to a quiet and solitary grove of ancient 
olives, with hollow trunks and gnarled boughs, over- 
hanging the brook Keclron, and looking across to 
Olivet. And meditating here on what essentially con- 
stituted the Eevelation of Christ ; meditating on the 
likeness of these present times to those nearly two 
thousand years ago, — the likeness, considering the one 
as a European, the other, as a worldwide phenomenon, 
the likeness of nascent Christianity to nascent Humani- 
tariainsm, — and meditating on the terrible distance 
hitherto between Belief and Eeality ; I was again, as 
indeed perpetually, brought back to the question of 
Authority. For, when a New Eeligion is preached, 
most pertinent is the question of 4 the chief priests and 
elders of the people ' — 'Ev iroia itjovaia ravra Troiels ; 
kclI tls croL eSo)Ke rrjv i^ovcriav ravriqv ; £ By what au- 
thority doest thou these things ? and who gave thee 
this authority ? 1 And that question cannot now be an- 
swered by a refusal to answer it 2 — OvSe lyw Xeyco vjjlIv 

6 Neither tell I you by 
what authority I do these things.' 

For the distinctive want of this age is that the syn- 
thetic ideal of Faith be brought into accord with the 

1 Matt. xxi. 23. 2 Ibid. 27. 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



299 



analytic facts of Knowledge. And hence, not only is 
the pertinence of the question of Authority acknow- 
ledged, but it is one which is now pressed by the 
adherents of the New on those of the Old, rather than 
by those of the Old on those of the New Faith. By 
what Authority, say we, do yon, ' chief priests and elders 
of the people,' teach your dogmas of Atonement, and of 
Miracle, of Judgment, and of Hell ? And if you reply, 
'By an absolute, a supernatural Authority,' we deny 
that, regard beins: had to our new knowledge, there is the 

' O O CD 7 

slightest evidence for such a pretension ; and we affirm 
that Nature and Man, in the whole breadth and scope 
of their manifestations, are the only true, because the 
most complete, Eevelation of what is to be believed with 
respect to the mystery of Existence, and the future of 
Humanity. 

In the Eomantic Literature of that great culmi- 
nating epoch of the Middle Ages which, at the preach- 
ing of Peter the Hermit, sent the armies of the Cru- 
saders to the Holy Land, this remarkable fact is to be 
observed. The Crusades hardly appear at all in the 
Eomances. 1 But instead of the Eescue of the Holy 
Sepulchre, we find the Quest of the Holy Grail. Con- 
temporaneously (though I am not prepared to say, with 
some, causally connected,) with the institution of the 
order of the Templars in 1118, the tradition of the 
San Greal first began to assume a defined form. 2 But 
that Quest has a profounder meaning for us than for 

1 Except in those of Charlemagne. On his mythical conquest of 
Jerusalem, see Michel, Charlemagne, an Anglo-Norman Poem of the 12th 
Century. Preface. 

2 See Schultz, Essay on Welsh Tradition, p. 121. 



300 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



them. For, if we consider, not the word in its innu- 
merable etymologies, but the idea in its various trans- 
formations, mythological, legendary, and romantic, we 
shall, I think, best conceive the Quest of the Holy 
Grail as a symbol of the Quest of that Ideal necessary 
to noble Human Life. Thus the Quest of the Holy 
Grail will symbol all the profoundest activity of our 
present revolutionary period. Too narrow now for our 
sentiment of justice is the Jewish God ; too incredible 
now for our knowledge of facts, the Orthodox Creed ; 
too baleful, at once, and too false, that Ideal of which 
the symbol is a Bason of Blood. And, as in romance, 
so now in reality, there may be distinguished a Tem- 
poral and a Spiritual Knighthood. Of the latter, in 
these days, are those who, denying that the true Grail, 
the true Ideal, is preserved in the Castle of Miracle, quest, 
with the boldness and patience of science, and achieve, 
in Nature and in Humanity, a New Eevelation. And so 
fitly typified by Jerusalem is that ' Chatel Merveil ' which 
they attack and would raze to the ground, that by those 
who, to make way for a higher Faith, a truer Ideal, would 
destroy the antitype, the type cannot be held sacred. 

And yet, as we have found it throughout this Pil- 
grimage, in the case of every other Holy Place of 
Christianity, Jerusalem, from a higher point of view, 
from the point of view of the history of Humanity, does 
again become sacred. It is sacred by the memory of 
the crucifixion of Jesus ; and sacred by the memory of 
that great culminating epoch of Christianity which, 
glorious in the devotion and heroism of Action, as in 
the inspiration and beauty of Art, produced the Cru- 



Cn.vr. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



301 



sades for the rescue of his Sepulchre. 1 And even if 
antiquarians should discover the Holy Sepulchre to be 
indeed the Tomb of Jesus ; would they make it any 
the more sacred ; would Christ's body actually having 
lain there make it one whit more sacred than it is by 
the unfathomable passion, and infinite tears, of the souls 
that have spent themselves for it? Nay, would not 
the affirmative settlement of the antiquarian question, 
by diminishing to some slight extent the falsity of the 
beliefs concerning Christ, to such extent also diminish 
the pathos of the heroisms stimulated by the Christian 
myths ? For, considering that it is no isolated occur- 
rence, but one typical hitherto of religious beliefs, what 
can be more tragic, what can touch with more pity,, 
what appal with more terror, than the thought that 
that unfathomable passion, those infinite tears, were 
spent but for a dream ? But sacred if Jerusalem thus, 
is by the tragedy and pathos of those deluded heroisms 
of which it has been the scene or aspiration, as the 
City of the Sepulchre of the Christian God ; no less 
sacred must it thus also be as the City of the Temple 
of the Jewish God. And scarcely more at Sinai, the 
Mount of God, was the tragic irony of human beliefs, 
while the Ideal is not yet in accordance with the facts 
of the Universe, — scarcely more was this tragic irony 
brought home to one at Sinai, the Mount of God, than at 
Jerusalem, the City of God. 

1 It is at least a story finely characteristic of the enthusiasm of the 
time, that of Richard Cceur de Lion having 1 , when in sight of Jerusalem, 
exclaimed — ' Beau Sire Dieu, je te prie que tu ne souffres que je voie ta 
sainte cite, puisque je ne la puis delivrer des mains de tes ennemis.' — 
Joinville, p. 116. 



.302 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



But now, to give some brief account of the rites 
of the Holy Week. On Maunday-Thursday, the sight 
is the mummery by which the Greek Patriarch com- 
memorates, in the court of the Church, Christ's wash- 
ing of the Disciples' feet. With the hope of a better 
view, I was hastening up, by some dark private pas- 
sages and staircases in the walls of the great dome, 
to the roof of the adjoining Greek Convent. But the 
hurry of sight-seeing was rebuked and stopt as the 
dark passages were suddenly illuminated with the music 
of a simple, yet sublime hymn, sounding through the 
Dome, over the Sacred Tomb, across from the Latin 
chapel of the Apparition. I was set reflecting on the 
relation between those two sects of the Latin, or Ca- 
tholic Apostolic Church of the West, and the Greek, 
or Holy Orthodox Church of the East, between which 
this Cathedral of Christendom is chiefly divided : — 
though the other sects, which are also nationalities, — 
the Abyssinians, Copts, Armenians, Georgians, and 
Syrians, — have likewise their chapels within the sacred 
Avails. And considering, on the one hand, the origin 
and comparative intellectual subtlety of Christian doc- 
trines ; and, on the other hand, the ceremonies, the art, 
and particularly the music of the Eastern and Western 
Churches respectively ; it seemed to me that we might 
regard the former as distinctively the intellectual, the 
latter, as distinctively the moral, development of Chris- 
tianity. This, by no means, however, implies that the 
Greek Church is less superstitious than its Latin rival ; 
the reverse, indeed, is probably the case ; and that, 
just because of the comparative repression of that 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



303 



moral element which is the chief opponent of formal- 
ism, and of idolatry. A similar relation we also find, 
in the Latin Church itself, between the Dominican and 
Franciscan Orders. And, indeed, relations of such a 
complementary character will probably be found to 
distinguish all the manifestations of Force, whether in 
Natural or Humanital Phenomena, 

The next day was Good Friday, and I went, in the 
afternoon, to the Jews' Place of Wailing. But when I 
beheld these men kissing the great stones that still 
remain of their ancient Temple-walls, and repeating 
their national psalms, it seemed to me that, if their 
wailing was in any degree heartfelt, if it really lifted 
them, for a time at least, above the sordidness of their 
lives, their sorrow was too sacred to be a spectacle for 
a stranger. And so, I quickly turned away. Yet I 
feared afterwards that I had acted from a needless 
scruple. For, judging from what I actually saw among 
the few Jews who happened to be then at the place, 
the wailing might rather have been pronounced the 
performance of a rite, than the expression of an 
emotion. 

In the evening, I went with my Eoman Catholic 
friend Hamilton to the Latin celebration of the Cruci- 
fixion at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. How 
strange, yet in its general significance, how natural, an 
historical coincidence that Friday should be the day 
on which Christians commemorate the Crucifixion of 
Christ, and the day the Jews wail, because they are 
outcasts, and wanderers ! The service began in the 
Chapel of the Apparition, which has been in posses- 



304 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt IV. 



sion of the Franciscans since the year 1257. The ser- 
mon was in Italian ; and the finest, as it seemed to me, 
of all those I listened to that evening, in the chief lan- 
guages of Europe. First, the Friar-preacher impressed 
on his congregation where they were, and what they 
commemorated. And my only wonder was that the 
pilgrims were not more profoundly affected than they 
seemed. For, as the Preacher pointed out, a little way 
outside the Chapel was the Tomb of Jesus. The ves- 
tibule was the scene of Mary Magdalene's touching 
meeting, as is believed, with Christ after his Eesurrec- 
tion. On the site of the Chapel, Jesus had afterwards 
appeared to his mother Mary. And on the south side 
of the Altar is a piece of the Column of the Flagella- 
tion. Then the Preacher, bringing forth a great Cross, 
spoke of the adoration of it, in its true sense ; not as an 
idolatrous image, but as a visible symbol of the love of 
Christ. And with such ardour did the Franciscan 
speak of that love in the musical Italian tongue, that, 
at length, his audience seemed touched, — and yet, to 
my astonishment, if they believed all they professed, 
touched very little and very partially. Only one per- 
son, indeed, seemed greatly affected — of course, a 
woman. She, unable to sit up, fell oif her seat in a 
passion of tears. Her, therefore, an old friar threa- 
tened with expulsion, if she did not sit up, and behave 
herself. Up, however, she would not sit. And the 
monk had to content himself with her moaning being 
low, and her weeping silent. The Franciscan, from 
speaking of the Cross, naturally proceeded to speak of 
St. Francis, that Poet-Saint, in Dante's words, 'tutto 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



305 



serafico in arclore ; ' and of that ecstatic 6 vision in 
which it was manifested to him that he was to be 
transformed into a resemblance to Christ, not by the 
martyrdom of the flesh, but by the might and fire of 
Divine Love ; ' that vision, on recovering from which 
6 it was seen that, in his hands, his feet, and side he 
carried the wounds of our Saviour.' And the Preacher 
concluded by impressing on all his congregation the 
duty of self-abnegation, if they would follow in the 
footsteps of Christ ; and finally, acldrest himself spe- 
cially to the Pilgrims, who were, indeed, the majo- 
rity of his audience. 

At the conclusion of the service, candles were 
distributed to the congregation ; and each lighted his 
candle from his neighbour's. The crowd of Latin, 
that is, with the exception of myself, Soman Catholic 
Pilgrims, from every quarter of the world, then formed 
themselves in order, each bearing a lighted candle, 
and all chaunting in Latin the prescribed psalms. And 
so, with a sermon at every station, and ever in a dif- 
ferent language, we slowly advanced round the chancel 
which forms the immense chapel of the Greeks, till we 
came to the stairs which lead to the chapels on the 
rock of Calvary. On Calvary, — yes, the very mount 
of the Crucifixion, for all the scenes of it are enshrined 
within the walls of this vast Cathedral, — I listened to 
sermons in German, and in French, and then, — the 
Crucifixion was enacted in all its details. A figure, 
the size of a man, and with flexible limbs, was crovmed 
with thorns ; was nailed to the Cross ; was offered 
vinegar to drink ; was pierced with a spear ; was taken 

x 



306 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part TV. 



down from the Cross, and laid on a bier. As it 
was borne slowly past me, while all bowed themselves 
or knelt, such contending thoughts and feelings dis- 
turbed me, as I shall not here attempt to analyse or 
express. Down from the Eock of Calvary, it was 
borne to the Stone of Unction. There, a sermon was 
delivered in Arabic ; and then, the anointing of the 
body of Jesus was commemorated on the image. 
Thence, the procession advanced to the Holy Sepulchre 
in the middle of the Eotunda, under the great Dome. 
There, a sermon was preached in Spanish. Then, the 
image, borne through the little outer room, the Chapel 
of the Angel, is deposited, at length, in the Sepulchre. 
And into this small quadrangular vault, — in which burn 
continually perfumes and incense in forty-two lamps of 
gold and silver, — two by two, the Pilgrims press, and 
kneeling, kiss, and wet with tears, the kiss-worn edge of 
the marble slab that covers the sacred rock-hewn Tomb. 

At midnight was formed the Procession of the 
Greeks; but in it were no images; only an em- 
broidered Banner, on which was pictured the body of 
Christ, was carried solemnly aloft, and borne to the 
Sepulchre. Very noteworthy, I think, in reference 
to the relation above-suggested between the Eastern 
and Western Churches, is the fact that one of the chief 
points in which the Holy Orthodox, differs from the 
Eoman Catholic Church, is the exclusion of images 
from sacred buildings, and also, the prohibition of life- 
like pictures. 1 And there is more significance than 

1 The other points of difference are : the Calendar ; the procession of 
the Holy Ghost ; the rejection of a Purgatory; Communion in both kinds; 
and the Marriage of the secular clergy. 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



307 



may, at first sight, appear, in the ugliness of the Greek 
sacred pictures. For they are painted according to 
formal and long established rules of art which inten- 
tionally curb the expression of the moral feeling of 
the artist. And very interesting in a general historical 
point of view is it, as already remarked, to observe, 
how the suppression of the moral element leads, not, as 
might be supposed, to the more vigorous growth, but 
to the more rapid death of the intellectual element. 
But, from the Sacred Tomb, they issue again with the 
pictured Banner, and thence the procession returns as it 
had come. And so, I left, at length, for that day, the 
Church of the Sepulchre, not caring, even in order to 
secure a good place for the great miracle of the morrow, 
to lie down for the night among the Pilgrims who, 
men, women, and children, were already, in an undis- 
tinguishable confusion of nationalities, stretched on the 
floor of the Cathedral of Christendom, as thick as the 
vermin that covered them. 

I fear that, during all this, and particularly while I 
formed part of the Latin procession, I had, in my mind 
what my fellow-pilgrims would have deemed impious 
thoughts. For I felt, or rather knew myself to be an 
actor in what was not merely a Christian rite, reaching 
back to the time of the Crusades ; but what was, in the 
widest sense of the word, a Human Mystery. But 
hence the sincerity of my reverence. For what we 
more distinctly know of, for instance, the mysteries of 
Osiris and of Dionysus, did not rise up in my mind, 
to make me mock at Christianity ; but to cause me more 
clearly to see the oneness of Humanity ; and hence to 

x 2 



308 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



excite some feeble flame, perchance, of that Love which 
is indeed worship ' in spirit and in truth.' And there- 
fore, I trust, that there was no real impiety in thinking, 
during this candle-bearing procession, of the lampa- 
dephoria of the XafXTrdSajp rjfiepa; and recalling the 
saying — fc Many bear the thyrsi, but few are initiated.' 

As to the Calvary-mummery — the representation of 
all the incidents of the Crucifixion with the flexible- 
limbed image the size of life, — this, with my Presby- 
terian education, did, it must be confessed, require con- 
siderable self-restraint to look upon without iconoclastic 
repugnance. To me, the noblest and most touching, 
because the simplest and most meaningful, religious sym- 
bolism that exists, is that of the celebration of the Lord's 
Supper, or the Communion, according to the forms of 
the Scottish Church. Would only that it were possible to 
partake of it as a sign' simply of Human Brotherhood ! 
But, on Calvary, I recalled to myself that I was not 
there so much to indulge my own feelings, as to en- 
deavour to enter into those of others. This mode of 
bringing home the fact of the Crucifixion was, indeed, 
to me gross and material in the last degree ; yet minds 
there, no doubt, were to which it could thus only be 
forcibly brought home ; and a poor thing it seemed to 
let the grossness of the language hinder appreciation 
of the greatness of the fact. So, having conquered my 
native repugnance, the bearing past me on the bier of 
the image taken from the Cross excited in me, I almost 
thought, more emotion than in any other of the Pil- 
grims, — Christians though they were, and Christian as 
I was not. 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



309 



And yet, was this to be wondered at ? I saw here 
the representation, not of an imaginary divine, but of 
an actual, and infinitely more pitiful, human tragedy. 
In the old objective religions of the First Age of 
Humanity, it was the death of Nature that was cele- 
brated in the Mysteries. In the new subjective religions 
of that Second Age initiated by the great Eevolution of 
the Sixth Century B.C., it is the death of a divine Man 
that is celebrated. But what really is the whole history 
of Man hitherto but a progress achieved through con- 
tinuous martyrdoms ? Is there not, therefore, profound 
truth, as well as pathos, in these celebrations ? And 
seeing that, only through such martyrdoms, is the pro- 
gress of Humanity possible, will not every great soul 
for ever cherish, though in a new sense, the glorious 
Christian hymns of the Cross ? 

Crux est salus animarum, 
Verum lumen et prseclarum, 
Et dulcedo cordium. 
Crux est vita beatorum, 
Et thesaurus perfectoruin, 
Et decor et gaudium. 

Crux est speculum virtutis ; 
Gloriosre dux salutis, 
Cuucta spes fidelium. 
Crux est decus salvandorum 
Et solatium eorum 
Atque desiderium. 

Crucifixe, fac me fortem, 
Ut libeuter tuam mortem 
Plangam, donee vixero. 
Tecum volo vulnerari, 
Te libenter amplexari 
In cruce desidero. 

Is not all that indeed true, and in such a profound 
human sense, as to make the ordinary Christian sense of 



310 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Faet IV. 



it appear small and shallow, and but a preparation 
for the larger and deeper Humanitarian sense of it? 
Is it not true that, if Happiness is to be found in the 
satisfying of all selfish impulses ; Blessedness is to be 
found, and found only, in the sacrifice of these, that 
sacrifice of self of which the Cross of Christ will be 
the everlasting symbol ? For is it not true that, how- 
ever we may strive and hope for the bettering of the 
conditions of Human Existence, the happiness of all 
will never be possible without the self-sacrifice of each ? 
Thus will Christianism be transformed in Humamtari- 
anism, even as in Christianism the Heathenism that 
preceded it. A new and higher meaning Christianism 
gave to the Cross, the old symbol of the universal Sun- 
worships, or Nature-worships. And so, a higher mean- 
ing still will Humanitarianism give to the Cross the 
symbol of Christianism. As the symbol of the death 
and resurrection of Nature became the symbol of the 
death and resurrection of Christ ; the symbol of the 
death and resurrection of Christ will become the symbol, 
at once, of the Progress — through death and resurrec- 
tion — of Humanity, and of that Self-sacrifice which, in 
continuous martyrdoms and deaths, makes the Progress 
possible of ever more glorious new-births, or resur- 
rections. 

Changed, therefore, in the form of its expression, 
or wholly cast-off as may be every doctrine of Chris- 
tianity, untouched will remain the Cross of Christ ; 
nay, even because of these changes and disappear- 
ances, shine forth it will, but with new meaning and 
glory. Por no need is there of these incredible doc- 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



311 



trines of the supernatural character of Jesus of Naza- 
reth, and supernatural virtue of his crucifixion, to 
make the instrument of his passion for ever sacred, re- 
splendent for ever with divine symbolism and counsel. 
Symbol it will for ever be of self-sacrifice, guide to 
the blessed life of Duty ; and remembrancer of those 
martyrdoms to which we owe every best possession we 
hold, or, for those who come after us, hope for. Let 
Jesus be God, and what meaning is there in that ago- 
nised cry, ' My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken 
me ? ' Let him be Man, and then, indeed, there is in 
it unutterable tragic pathos ; nor that only, but the 
most impressive possible moral lesson. For what was 
there really in that cry but the frightful despair of 
finding all his most cherished convictions apparently, 
after all, but dreams, and himself, loveless, cursed, and 
alone ? And yet it was not so. His destiny was to 
be worshipped for two thousand years as God, and to 
be loved through all time as one of the chief heroes of 
the race. And thus, as at the Wells of Moses, and at 
the Mount of God, so here again, at the Holy Sepulchre, 
we find that the sweeping-away of Christian supersti- 
tion does not only not take from the Holy Places of 
Christianity all historic interest, but, in making human 
and real, increases immeasurably in intensity whatever 
associations they may have of terror or of pathos. 

Nor, I hope, did I, notwithstanding my incredulity, 
(a very different thing from 1 infidelity '), take part 
in this Christian procession either to profane it, or 
be myself unbenefited. For had we not in this 
procession of many nationalities, these sermons in 



312 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Past IV. 



many tongues, a sensible presentation of the nobler 
side of Christianity ; of that wider spirit of love 
and of brotherhood which assured the victory, over 
merely local and national religions, of that Xew Eeli- 
gion preached eighteen hundred years ago? But in 
the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in which every 
Christian sect, save those of the Eeformation, has one 
or more chapels, it was impossible to see the union 
of Mankind through Christianity without witnessing 
also, in that Cathedral of Mutual Hate, the disunion of 
Mankind through Superstition. And could these things 
be seen and felt by anyone moving in such a proces- 
sion in a place, after all, more consecrated by the 
heroism of Love than profaned by the sacrilege of 
Hate, and no practical resolve follow it all ? Could 
these things be seen without a silent vow bein^ taken 
to devote oneself to aid in destroying that superna- 
turalism of Christianity which is the root of the fana- 
ticism, mutual hate, and idolatry of Christians ; to aid 
in freeing of the Judseo-Osirian superstition of the 
established forms of its expression, that divine Spirit 
of Love which characterized that Universal Eevo- 
lution of which Christianity was but the Western 
culmination and flower ; to aid in giving it a new, a 
wider, a Greek form, an expression in accordance with 
Science, in accordance with the Greek conception of 
Law ? 

The next day, Saturday, was the morning of Easter 
Eve, which, instead of Easter Sunday, is here, as in 
Spain, the great day of the Spring Festival of the 



Chap. T. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOB. 



313 



Christians. Curiously enough, after having been once 
or twice disappointed in our hopes of entering the 
Haram, and setting foot within the sacred Mosque of 
Omar, it was for the morning of this day that permis- 
sion was, at length, granted. Each one of the party 
had to give a baksheesh of a sovereign, and we had to 
be up soon after five o'clock in the morning, in order 
that we infidel dogs of Christians might be out of the 
sacred precincts before we could give, it might be, 
mortal offence to any considerable number of the 
Faithful. And yet it was, indeed, very fit that, hur- 
ried by the fierce fanaticism of Islam out of its sacred 
Mosque, we should go to witness the degradation of Chris- 
tianity in its holiest Church. For such phenomena very 
naturally co- exist. One very fitly passes from the ex- 
perience of the one to the observation of the other. And 
in the walk from the Mosque to the Church it is very 
clearly seen that, not by Christianity, in the degradation 
of its established forms, idolatrous, or bibliolatrous, but 
by a New Christianity, a New Ideal of Human Brother- 
hood, a New Eeligion, will Islam be converted, or duly 
subordinated. For the fanaticism that isolates gives way 
only to the enthusiasm that unites. 

Early as it still w T as when, after our visit to the 
Mosque of Omar, we entered the Church of the Sepulchre 
of God, the crowd was so vast, and already so ex- 
cited, that Mr. Buckle would fain have returned if he 
could ; but once fairly in the stream of inrushing pil- 
grims, it was safer to go on. At length w T e made our 
way across the Eotunda to the little Sacristy of the 



314 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



Latin Friars ; 1 and here, for hours, we had what may 
be called either a refuge, or a prison. I frequently, 
however, sallied-out, as far as the Turkish Guards 
would permit, into the wild uproar of the Funeral 
Games. Bound and round the sacred Tomb, the 
Christians danced, and raced, and leapt on each other's 
shoulders, clapping their hands, and shouting, 6 This is 
the Tomb of Jesus Christ ! God save the Sultan ! 
Jesus Christ hath us redeemed ! ' In the intervals of 
my retreat into the Sacristy from the frightful heat and 
noise of the Botunda, I got into discussion with Mr. 
Buckle on the necessary qualifications of the historian. 
I maintained, and he, at length, partially admitted 
that, for the truly great historian was requisite, not 
only the analytic power of the philosopher, but the 
sympathetic insight of the poet ; that higher power 
by which the idea is seen under all the ignorance with 
which it may be clothed, and fanaticism by which it 
may be darkened ; that widest sympathy which clears 
of all one-sicled bitterness, and gives to the history of 
Humanity, even in such wild scenes of it as that pre- 
sented by these Funeral Games at the Sepulchre of God, 
an aspect which is not so much contemptible, or hate- 
ful, or sacrilegious, as pitiful, humourous, and tragical. 
For if these games mock the supernatural pretensions 
of Christianity, they unite it with that Humanity, 2 of 

1 I cannot distinctly recollect whether it is in this, or the larger 
sacristy that is preserved the straight double-edged sword and the spurs 
of the heroic Godfrey de Boulogne, 1 qui totam istam terram acquisivit 
cultui Christiano.' 

2 Compare the Classic, and other Funeral Games ; such as the Arab 
races, for instance, described by Teschendorf, at the Tomb of Sheykh 
Saleh, ch. i. p. 50. 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



315 



which all the phenomena are divine, and human all, — 
TrdvTa 6eta kcu avOpcoinva iravra. 

At length, from the hot and crowded Sacristy, we 
were admitted, through a low, narrow door, to a stair- 
case which led up to one of the Latin galleries of the 
Eotunda. And thence, we looked down on the Games, 
now at the height of their fanatic fury. For the 
Miracle was behind its time. Nothing could be done 
till the Pasha arrived. 

' De par le Roi, defense a, Dieu 
De faire miracle en ce lieu.' 

And God had to wait for his Excellency. At last, 
however, we understood either that the Pasha had 
arrived, or that he had given permission for the Miracle 
taking place in his absence. Forth, then, issues from 
the Greek chapel, on the east of the Eotunda, a long 
procession with embroidered banners, and, amid solemn 
chants, and savage yells, thrice they move round the 
Holy Sepulchre. Then, the procession is broken through 
by the fiercely-swaying crowd ; the priests escape as 
they can ; and the 4 Bishop of the Fire ' is thrust into 
the chapel of the Sepulchre, of which the door is im- 
mediately closed. 

Now is the hushed and awful moment. God Him- 
self is about to descend in fire on the Tomb of His Son. 
Hark ! — The crack of a lucifer-match ! — And suddenly, 
at a little hole in the wall of the Sepulchre, the Holy 
Fire appears ! Amid inconceivable excitement, candles 
are instantly lit from it, and from each other through- 
out the whole vast multitude. Magnificent was the 
tossing spray of countless lights above the dark surge 



3iC 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



of struggling beings. But looking down from our safe 
gallery, through the smoke and glare, on the demo- 
niac masses, bathing in the flames their hands and 
faces, all that was visible of them ; one's next impres- 
sion was such as to provoke a smile as one remem- 
bered that a similar sight is promised to all true 
Believers, in the view of Hell from Abraham's bosom. 
Finally, however, and abidingly, the spectacle had, in 
its more serious aspects, and in its wider relations, 
such depths of pathos, such heights of fiercest, and 
most scathing mockery, that one felt it would 
need to lie for long in the mind before, if ever, the 
thronging thoughts it suggested could have adequate 
utterance. 

At dinner at the inn, I rejoined Mr. Buckle. For 
he had been fortunate in escaping from the Sacristy to 
a gallery earlier than I had. The conversation, which 

4. he led, turned on Miracles. And he pressed home, 
with too evident implications, that commonplace of 
logic, that more evidence is required to prove an un- 
common, than a common event ; and that, for instance, 
it would require the smallest amount of evidence to 
prove that Csesar died, but the very greatest amount 
of diverse and unimpeachable testimony to prove that, 
instead of dying, he floated bodily up into the clouds. 
So pointedly did he urge this, as to cause the reverend 
representatives of the Apostles, then at table, to rise 
up suddenly, and flee. When they had gone, Mr. 
Buckle laughed, and looking across to me said, he 
6 liked to launch a thunderbolt now and then.' And 

y objectionable as, under the circumstances, his argu- 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



317 



ment no doubt was in point of taste ; yet it was pro- 
bably some sense of the pungency of its truth that 
made his logic so unpalatable. 

On Easter Monday, — the Dead Sea-region being 
infested with predatory Arabs, and unsafe for any 
but large bodies of travellers, — the parties of the 
Petra-caravan — the Hamilton party, Baronet's party, 
American party, and our own, — once more reunited, 
and, clattering up the steep and narrow streets of 
Jerusalem, rode out of the Gates of Zion. And 
either inside or outside the walls, 1 we passed the Pool 
where, 4 in an evening-tide, it came to pass that David 
having arisen from off his bed, saw, from the roof of 
the King's house, a woman washing herself ; and the 
woman was very beautiful to look upon ; . . . . and 
David sent messengers, and took Bathsheba, the 
daughter of Eliam, the wife of Uriah the Hittite.' 2 In 
about an hour and a half we came to Bethlehem. And 
though Jesus was, no doubt, born at Nazareth ; and 
Luke's story of his birth here is a Messianic myth ; still, 
these pastoral hills, this village, and its vast monastery, 
divided between Latins, Greeks, and Armenians, and 
crowning the terraced slope of the ridge which, covered 
with olive, fig, and vine, projects eastward from the 
central mountain-range, have certainly a great and 
abiding historical interest. For there must be for ever 
an interest in the locality of myths even of such 
beauty in themselves, and of such exquisite treatment 

1 The Pool of Bathsheba inside the Yafa Gate has its claim disputed 
by the Birket-es-Sultfm in the valley outside ; and, of course, both may 
be equally apocryphal. 

2 2 Saml. xi. 2, 3, 4. 



318 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



in Art, as those of the Birth in the Stable, the Vision of 
the Shepherds, and the Adoration of the Magi. And 
the hills of Bethlehem are also the scene of the Patri- 
archal legend of the death, in childbirth, of the beloved 
Each el ; the scene of the beautiful pastoral idyll of 
Euth the Moabitess, whose highland home is on the 
eastern horizon ; and the scene of the early shepherd- 
life of her greatgrandson, David, the son of Jesse, the 
Bethlehemite. And, if not the birthplace of Jesus, — 
seeing that in a cave here St. Jerome, the author of 
the Latin version of the Bible, and the Western 
Apostle of Celibacy, resided for the four-and-thirty years 
previous to his death, 1 — it were hardly, perhaps, too 
much to call Bethlehem the birthplace of Latin Chris- 
tianity, 2 and the nursery of Western Monasticism. 

Admitted within the walls of the vast trinity of 
Convents, — Latin, Greek, and Armenian, — and passing 
through the splendid Basilica, — the Church of the 
Nativity erected by the Empress Helena in 327, with 
ranges of marble columns taken probably from the 
porches of the Temple at Jerusalem, and the oldest 
monument of Christian architecture in the world, — we 
descend, by a winding flight of steps on the west side of 
the Choir, to the Sacred Caves. That in which God 
was born is a rocky vault, thirty-six feet by eleven feet ; 
and in the apse, at the east end of the chapel into 
which this cave is now converted, round a. silver star on 
the marble pavement, beneath sixteen silver lamps for 

1 a.d, 420. 

2 Compare Milman, History of Latin Christianity, vol. i. pp. 74-5 ; 
and History of CJiristianity, vol. iii. p. 4G5. 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



319 



ever burning, we read the words 4 Hie de Virgine 
Maria, Jesus Christus natus est.' True, however, was 
the old sarcasm which I recalled to Mr. Buckle, ' Multi 
nomine Divorum thalamos iniere pudicos.' 

Bibaldry ! Nay, consider what the caves have been 
which we have passed through before coming to this 
one, and the legends which make them ' sacred.' The 
cave in which Mary brought forth her God-begotten 
son we enter from that into which Joseph, her ' espoused 
husband,' retired at the moment of that delivery, to 
which he had, at length, become reconciled, though, at 
first, so naturally disturbed at the prospect of it. 1 But 
to realise the circumstances which made the withdrawal 
of Joseph necessary, or at least, becoming, is to realise 
the whole childbirth-scene. And can, indeed, the 
natural birth be realised, and yet the supernatural con- 
ception believed ? Far more poetical is the legend of 
the incarnation of Buddha. Supernatural was his 
conception; but supernatural also was his birth. His 
mother conceived from a ray of the Sun ; and at once 
the future Saviour came from her side. JSFo barbaric 
mixture here of natural and supernatural ! 

But Joseph's Cave we entered from that in which 
20,000 children ' from two years old and under ' were 
buried, whom Herod c sent forth and slew in Bethlehem, 
and in all the coasts thereof.' 2 And as we pass the 
Altar of the Innocents, blind ourselves we cannot to the 
spiritual significance of the physical connexion of the 
cave in which is said to have been buried all the poor 
Man-begotten babes, the victims of the impossibly 

1 Matt. i. 19. 2 Matt. ii. 16. 



320 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



atrocious massacre of Bethlehem, with that other cave 
in which is said to have been born the God-begotten 
child. Fit commentary on the one legend is the other. 
The state of mind which could report and believe the 
supernatural birth is fitly commented on by the con- 
nexion therewith of an inhuman massacre as a dignify- 
ing accompaniment. And most fit omens are such 
connected legends of a Faith which, unsurpassed in the 
wildness of its superstitions by either of the other 
two great moral religions of the Modern Age, Budd- 
hism and Islamism, stands alone in the atrocities of 
its religious wars, persecutions, and St. Bartholomew- 
tides. 

But yet again. Before visiting the mythic Caves 
of the Nativity, we had passed through those really 
inhabited, either in life or in death, by the great Apostle 
of Monasticism, the cave which formed the cell, and 
that which contains the tomb of St. Jerome. The 
former is some twenty feet square and nine feet high, 
with a stone settle along its walls. Here he studied ; 
and here he dreamt ; now maddened with the licen- 
tious visions of the ascetic ; prostrate now with the 
superstitious terrors of the slave ; and now exultant 
amid the angelic chorusses of the saint. e Yet even I,' 
he says in an epistle to the virgin Eustochium, daughter 
of the most noble Eoman matron Paula, fi even I who, 
for the fear of Hell, had condemned myself to this 
dungeon, the companion only of scorpions and wild 
beasts, w^as in the midst of lascivious dances. My face 
was pale with fasting, but the mind in my cold body 
burned with desires ; the fires of lust burned up in the 



Chap. I. 



THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



321 



body which was already dead. . . . Alone I rushed forth 
into the Desert. . . . And the Lord is my witness 
that, after many tears, my eyes fixed on Heaven, I some- 
times seemed to be present among the hosts of Angels, 
and joyful and rejoicing sang, "We will haste after 
thee for the sweet savour of thine ointments." ' 1 And 
with such passionful ardour and intimate freedom does 
the Saint proceed to apply the Song of Solomon, and 
to speak of Christ as the husband of her who has pro- 
posed virginity, that I can venture to give but a single 
illustrative passage, and that only in the original, and 
in a note. 2 Think of the scorn with which a Greek of 
the time of Sokrates or of Perikles would have read 
such expressions of self- abusing agony, such effusions 
of futile bliss ; consider how rightly he would have 
compared them with the Oriental effeminacies of the 
priests of Cybele, and reveries of the worshippers of 
Adonis ; and judge the Idea of which the attempted 
realisation had such fruits as these among its effects. 

In passing from the cave of the real celibacy to the 
cave of the mythic virginity, we have passed from effect 
to cause. For what will naturally be the consequences 
of the chiefly worshipped God being a divine man in 
whom it were the grossest blasphemy to imagine 
sexual feelings, whom it were even blasphemy to 

1 Epist. xxii. ad Eustoch. See also Epist. xviii. 

2 ' Semper te cubiculi tui secreta custodiunt ; semper tecum sponsus 
ludat intrinsecus. Oras, loqueris ad sponsum : legis ; ille tibi loquitur ; 
et quum te sonmus oppresserit, veniet post parietem, et mittit manum 
suam per foramen, et tanget ventrem tuam ; et expergefacta cor.surges 
et dices : " Vulnerata caritate eo-o sum : " et rursus ab eo audies : " Hortus 

o 

conclusus soror mea sponsa, hortus coriclusus, fons signata." ' — Epist. xxii. 
25, p. 107. 

Y 



322 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pabt IV. 



imagine otherwise than 6 immaculately conceived ' ? 
Truly to worship is to imitate. And given such an 
ideal as that of Christ, is not the logic evident of the 
attempted extirpation, and strict conditioning of the 
sanction of sexual feelings in the Christian Social 
System ? Not Monasticism only, but a Law also of 
Marriage sanctioning sexual indulgence only in the 
case of an indissoluble and exclusive contract of co- 
habitation for life between a man and a woman, sub- 
jecting the woman in marriage to the man, and 
imposing on her, not only personal, but proprietary, 
disabilities, was the logical, and therefore necessary, 
because reasonable, social consequence of belief in an 
Immaculate Conception,, and adoration of a Virgin 
God. 

It is a ride of but three hours from Bethlehem to 
the wild glen, and grandly picturesque convent of Mar 
Saba. Graciously we were admitted by the monks, 
and had cells assigned us for the night. But evil is 
apt to be the imagination of celibates. And as, poor 
wretches ! the thought of the two pretty girls of the 
American party having slept within their walls might, 
for all their fasting and their prayers, have discomposed 
for ever the holy brotherhood, that party had to camp 
outside. No description could convey an adequate 
idea of the night-scene from the flat roof of my cell : 
cliffs and towers in silvery light, built over, and amid 
ravines of deepest gloom. And the scene had for me 
a symbolic significance. For this region of the Dead 
Sea is the original seat of Christian Asceticism. Not a 
little remarkable it surely is that this region which, in 



Chap. I. THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 323 

Patriarchal legend, is associated with the unnatural 
sensualities of Sodom and Gomorrah, should have been, 
in later times, the scene of, considering their direct 
historical sequences, the most important attempts, 
perhaps, that have been made by man to attain an 
equally unnatural spirituality. Towers of silvery light, 
and ravines of deepest gloom ! 

The next morning, by a wild mountain-road, first 
ascending and then descending for about four hours, 
we came to the Plain of the Dead Sea. On arriving 
at its slimy margin, all the men, except, of course. 
Mr. Buckle, stripped and got in, to experience the sin- 
gular sensation of being unable to sink. We then 
lunched on the beach. But the scene was the most 
sad, desolate, and melancholy imaginable. The salt- 
crusted shore, covered with timber-drift or puny 
shrubs, and broken up by little unwholesome swamps ; 
the mountains on either hand, burning, sterile, and 
parched ; and the suffocating atmosphere we breathed 
from the steaming cauldron of which these mountains 
are the sides. But, as I have said, there were ladies in 
our company, and so there was life. And though one's 
thoughts, in the morning, — as we rode up the rocky 
defile from the convent, and beheld on either side the 
caves once the homes of the hermits by whom these 
ravines were peopled ; — though one's thoughts had 
then been of a more serious character, I chiefly re- 
member the Plain of the Dead Sea for the glorious 
gallop, by the side of a riding-habit, to the thickets of the 
Jordan ; my second bathe, that day, in its rapids ; and the 
gallop thence, still by the side of a fair companion, across 

Y 2 



324 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



the plain, winding through shrubberies and cornfields, 
past the Crusaders' Tower, in the purpling sunset, to the 
mounds above Jericho, where we were to camp for the 
night. But the surface-talk of this charming ride was 
not without an undercurrent of thought. For one could,, 
in our respectable caravan, say nothing against literal 
belief in the legends of the Dead Sea, of the Jordan, 
and of Jericho : — Abraham's intercession for the Cities 
of the Plain, face to face with God, after entertaining 
him, and his attendants, with stewed veal, served with 
cakes and butter ; 1 the division thrice, yes, thrice of 
the Jordan ; first by Joshua, 2 then by Elijah, 3 and then 
by Elisha, 4 so that the ' waters parted hither and 
thither,' those, 6 which came from above, standing and 
rising up upon an heap,' and those, c which came down 
toward the Sea of the Plain, even the Salt Sea, failing, 
and being cut off; ' and that other event, as our good 
Murray says, ' of still more thrilling interest,' the bap- 
tism of God 5 himself in its sacred waters ; ' an event, 
certainly, after the mention of which it is, I confess, 
an anticlimax to conclude with the fall c down flat' of 
the walls of Jericho, on the Israelites shouting and 
blowing their trumpets : 6 — one could, in our respectable 
caravan, say nothing against literal belief in these 
legends ; and so, what expression could one give to 
one's contempt of belief, and indignation at pretence 
of belief in fables so puerile, so infantile rather ; what 
expression but that of an utter ignoring of them, in a 

1 Genesis xviii. 2 Josh. iii. 14-17. 

3 2 Kings ii. 8. 4 Ibid. 14. 

5 Matth. iii. 16-17 ; Mark i. 10, 11 ; Luke iii. 22 ; John i. 32. 
6 Josh. Ti. 20. 



Chap. I. THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 



325 



gay flirtation which had its chief zest from its giving 
implicitly, at least, the lie, to all these ' sacred associa- 
tions ' of the scene of it ? 

Our route, on the morrow, lay up a pass similar in 
its wild grandeur to that by which we had come down 
into the plain of the Jordan. And in the afternoon 
we came to Bethany, (' House-of-dates,') now called 
el-'Aziriyeh, (Lazarus-town,) on the eastern slope of 
Olivet. The tomb out of which the dead Lazarus was 
bidden come forth, and came, was, of course, shown us. 
But in the sublime ravine of Wady-el-Kelt, which we 
had just passed through, our Murray had reminded 
us that the Kelt is supposed to be the ' brook Cherith 
that is before Jordan ; ' and that it was here, therefore, 
that, after Elijah had sworn to king Ahab that 6 there 
should not be dew nor rain but according to his word,' 
the ravens, during the consequent famine, ' brought 
him bread and flesh in the morning, and bread and 
flesh in the evening.' 1 And considering our Murray's 
care too in reminding us of the Dead-Sea-, Jordan-, 
and Jericho-miracles, I question whether, even if we 
had been otherwise disposed to believe in the raising 
of Lazarus from the dead, we should not have had such 
a surfeit of the miraculous, as to be quite unable to 
stomach more. Not, however, to-day, amid the throng 
of Dead-Sea pilgrims, could one give rein to one's 
thoughts. 

But the Mount of Olives and Bethany had been 
the frequent goal of my walks, during the Holy Week, 
out of Jerusalem. And before we now re-enter the City 

1 1 Kings xvii. 1-7. 



32G 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



of the Sepulchre of God, I may be permitted a con- 
cluding word or two of expression for those thoughts 
and feelings which here had stirred me. For not only 
had I felt Bethany and Olivet to be sacred ; but so 
sacred as to make all lies of pretended belief in the 
miracle-legends of them impossible. 

As I stood on the summit of Olivet, the reputed 
scene of the Ascension; seeing it to be no Dream- 
land, but common earth and stones ; breathing the air 
which, while necessary to human lungs, enwraps our 
little star to but a very limited height ; looking up on 
the grey masses of watery vapour we call clouds ; and 
knowing what £ Heaven ' is, — the present Infinity and 
Eternity that enspheres us, — a Universe of Systems 
within Systems of Worlds, resplendent all with the glory 
of cognisable and calculable order and law ; almost 
incredible it seemed that men, — knowing all this as well 
as myself, and either actually, or imaginatively, on the 
spot, should, on any ground whatever, honestly believe 
it to be more likely that a man who had just said 
4 handle me and see, for a spirit hath not flesh and 
bones as ye see me have,' 1 and who had also just eaten 
4 a piece of a broiled fish, and of an honeycomb,' 2 should 
have ascended bodily, with, as would appear, his 
garments and all, into this ensphering air, and thence, 
into the unbreathable ether, — almost incredible that 
they should honestly believe this to be more likely than 
that the whole story of it was but a legend which, to 
the ignorant Galikeans, the reporters of it, had nothing 
specially marvellous about it, being but a repetition of 

] Luke xxiv. 39. 2 Ibid. 42. 



Chap. I. THE SEPULCHRE OF GOD. 327 

what they had from childhood been, taught to believe 
with respect to Enoch and Elijah. 

And here, on the summit of the Mount of Olives ; 
here, where one could realise the very presence of Jesus 
of Nazareth ; here, where, vague and uncertain as might 
be the lineaments of his character, as of his form, of 
one thing one might feel sure, that, in Jesus, there 
was by one's side a soul of intense moral earnestness, 
hatred of hypocrisy, and utter devotion to what he be- 
lieved to be truth ; here, thus realising the heroic pre- 
sence of Jesus, to pretend to believe in his fi Ascension,' 
seemed possible only to infidelity of the profoundest, 
blasphemy of the basest, kind — infidelity that must dis- 
believe the very existence of truth, blasphemy that, to 
its purest martyr, would say, ' thou fool ! ' No : let those 
who have stood here but to quibble and fence about the 
' Ascension,' and have gone from hence to enter Christian 
pulpits, answer to their own conscience. Eor me, Jesus 
himself here armed me against Christ ; against what — to 
any one unbiased by education or position, and daring 
to look in the face the facts of our later knowledge with 
respect generally to human development, and more 
particularly to myth-creation, — could, as it seemed, be 
but pretence of belief in his 6 Ascension ; ' but pretence 
of belief that the Tomb of Jesus was the Sepulchre of 
God. 



328 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



CHAPTEE H. 

THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 

Section I. 

In Mr. Buckle's last letter from Jerusalem lie thus 
wrote : ' I must tell you that I am stronger in mind 
and body than I have ever been since you knew me, 
and I feel fit to go on at once with my work. ... I 
feel boyish enough for anything, and fancy myself 
growing younger ; yet I am old, very old — forty on 
the 24th of last November. It's a great age.' And, 
as if to overtake Time, urgently he pressed our leaving 
Jerusalem the very day after we had returned from our 
excursion to the Dead Sea. For a restless excitement 
seemed now to have seized him, which caused him 
utterly to overestimate his strength, and proved, alas ! 
fatal. 

So, on the 24th of April, bidding a final farewell 
to the parties of the Petra Caravan, and I having paid 
the forfeit that had been won from me on the plains 
of Jericho, we again left Jerusalem, but now, on our 
journey across the Hills of Ephraim, and the Battlefield 
of Armageddon, to Galilee of the Gentiles, and Naza- 
reth. Our way lay first over and among those heights 
of the frontier-tribe of Benjamin to which the great 
passes of Central Palestine run-up from the valley of 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 329 



the Jordan on the east, and from the Maritime Plain 
on the west. These passes are, therefore, the scenes 
of some of the chief battles, most savage slaughters, 
and most barbarous legends of Jewish history. But 
as in Sinai, so in Palestine, no one of the miracles of 
which Mr. Buckle and I passed the site was ever, so 
far as I remember, the subject of discussion, or even of 
remark. To-day, therefore, if we looked down on the 
valley of Ajalon, we certainly smiled only, as even a 
contemporary Greek would have smiled, at the bar- 
baric fancy of Joshua's having commanded the sun to 
stand still, and its having obeyed. 1 And though we 
made a long stay at Bethel, it was neither the earlier 
nor the later memories of the place that detained us. 
Here, indeed, in the Patriarchal legend, Abraham built 
an altar as he journeyed toward the south; 2 and 
Jacob did the same, after having had a vision of his 
God standing on the £ top of a ladder,' or, as it should 
rather be translated, the 4 landing of a staircase ;' 3 and 
again when 4 Elohim appeared unto him ' here, thirty 
years after, and 4 spake with him ; ' 4 here also 
Yahveh sent a lion to tear one of his prophets in pieces 
because he had not disbelieved the lie of another ; 5 
and here the pious Josiah 4 slew all the priests of the 
high places upon the altars, and burned men's bones 
upon them.' 0 Still, it was not any of these 4 sacred 
memories ' that detained us so long at Bethel. 

Just before leaving Jerusalem Mr. Buckle had re- 
ceived from England a long letter in which a lady, (the 

1 Josh. x. 2 Genesis xii. 8, 9. 

3 Ibid, xxviii. 10-18. 4 Ibid. xxxv. 6-10. 

5 1 Kings xiii. 11-23. 6 2 Kings xxiii. 20. 



330 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



mother of the boys who were with us,) had, with kind 
thoughtfulness, copied out the greater part of the 
notice of the chief views of the 4 History of Civilisation ' 
which had just appeared in the fifth edition of Mr. 
Mill's ' System of Logic' And it was in reading and 
discussing the intelligence brought by this letter that 
our time passed so quickly at Bethel. As Mr. Mill's 
criticism is, in the main, favourable, Mr. Buckle was 
much gratified. For, though he had never happened 
to meet Mr. Mill, there was no one for whose opinion 
he entertained so high a respect, esteeming him 4 the 
greatest English (? British) thinker since Bacon.' Gra- 
tified also Mr. Buckle was by the womanly sympathy 
which had written out these pages of philosophical 
criticism. For, as he said, 6 none but a woman would 
have thought of such a thing.' So gratified, indeed, 
was Mr. Buckle that, for the first and last time, in my 
recollection of him, he expanded in a humorous prac- 
tical joke — presenting one of the fellows of the encircling 
crowd with a cheap Jerusalem cigar which, as he 
whispered to me, he had found would not draw ; and 
great was his amusement at the unlucky presentee's 
gratitude for the wretched weed, and the persistent 
efforts which he thought himself in courtesy bound 
to make, yet made in vain, to keep it alight for more 
than two successive puffs at a time. 

So long were we thus detained at Bethel, that we had 
no time to turn aside to Shiloh, with its 4 sacred me- 
mories ' of the nomadic Tent 1 and Ark of Jehovah, — 

1 Like, as Dean Stanley remarks, that of the nomadic Buddhists of 
the Kalmucks, among whom ' a Sacred Tent is still the only place of 
■worship.' — Sinai and Palestine, p. 233. 



Chai\ II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 331 



Our living Dread who dwells 
In Silo, his bright Sanctuary ; 

of the yearly 4 feast of the Lord,' 1 and of the atrocities 
which preceded and necessitated the rape of its virgin 
daughters as they danced in dances to God. 2 As it was, 
we arrived so late at our camping-place for the night, 
— the picturesque, but ill-famed Bobbers' Fountain, 
(Ain-el-Haramiyeh) — the dark and narrow 6 Yalley of 
Tears,' or dropping waters, alluded to in Psalm lxxxiv., 
as one of the stations on the road to Zion or Jerusalem 3 
— that, famisht as we were, we were fain to forego 
dinner for the sake of the quicker-served meal which, 
in my walking tours, in college-days, used to be called 
a £ meat-tea.' 

Our ride the next day towards Shechem was very 
interesting and beautiful. The country reminded me, 
as I said, of the scenery of Scotland ; though here, in 
the territory of Ephraim, it was the cultivated hills and 
howes of the Lowlands, not the forested mountains 
and glens of the Highlands, that were recalled. And 
this led Mr. Buckle to make some remarks on that 
Judaic character of the religion, which so singularly 
corresponds with those Palestinian similarities of the 
scenery, of Scotland, which I had been by no means the 
first to remark. 4 But our main discussion, as we rode 
leisurely along, was again on that fundamental pro- 
blem of the nature of Knowledge, to which the dis- 
cussion which had yesterday arisen on Mr. Mill's 

1 Judges xxi. 19. 3 Ibid, xix., xx., and xxi. 

3 Ren an, Vie de Jesus, p. 69. 

4 See, for instance, Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, pp. 101-2, and com- 
pare Martineau, Eastern Life. 



332 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part TV. 



criticism of the 4 History of Civilisation ' had led us 
back. For, as may be remembered, my first con- 
tention with Mr. Buckle, and that with which, on the 
first day of our Desert journey, the long series of our 
discussions had begun, had been, that the Science of 
History must have not only psychological, but meta- 
physical foundations ; that answers, implicit, at least, if 
not explicit, must be given to the ultimate questions as 
to the nature of Perception, of Knowledge, and of Vo- 
lition, and that Historical Method is so necessarily 
based on explicit or implicit solutions of these ques- 
tions, that, if, as Mr. Buckle maintained, our know- 
ledge is not yet sufficiently advanced for the treatment 
of these questions, then neither is it sufficiently advanced 
to justify us in affirming, as he affirmed, the possibility 
of a science of History. As to what, however, the true 
solution is of this problem of the nature of Knowledge, 
I could as yet only say that it seemed to me that it 
would be derived from, and would be, in fact, the 
largest application of, that conception of Mutual Deter- 
mination to which I had been led in the physical 
investigation of Causes, and study of the principle 
of the Conservation of Energy. Hence would follow the 
reconciliation, at length, of Idealism and Materialism. 
And therewith, and therewith only, I contended, should 
we have a true and complete Historical Method. 

But our discussion was interrupted when, from the 
summit of a bleak rocky ridge, we looked down on 
such a beautiful valley as we were hardly prepared to 
behold. It was covered with cornfields, unbroken by 
fence or village, and on its hilly sides were parklike 



Chap. H. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 333 

clumps of olive-trees. The whole scene well illustrated 
the richness of the vales of Ephraim as compared with 
those stony hills of Benjamin and of Judah whence we 
had come. This fruitful carse contracts far up into 
the glen of Shechem, hid from here between the moun- 
tains of Gerizim and Ebal, over which, far away on the 
northern horizon, is just distinguisht the snowy summit 
of Hermon. Down in the vale, towards the opening of 
the glen, is an ordinary Muslim tomb, which, however, 
is said probably to mark the true place where 4 the 
bones of Joseph,' the father of Ephraim and Manasseh, 
and the special patriarch of tins northern kingdom, 
6 having been brought up out of Egypt, were buried 
... in a parcel of ground that Joseph bought of the 
sons of Hamor, the father of Shechem.' 1 

But more interesting far is Jacob's Well, by which 
passes the lower road to the town. Unfortunately, 
however, we were on the upper road ; Mr. Buckle did 
not care to descend ; and I, — I regret, — went on with 
him. There is notliing, indeed, to be seen but, beside 
a little mound of ruins, a shallow pit, half-choked with 
rubbish. But one would fain believe the story of Jesus 
at this Weil to be a true reminiscence of the Prophet 
of Nazareth. If so, however, the words believed to have 
been here spoken — 9 AW 9 epyerai copa kou vvv Icttus, ore 
oi aXrj0LVol 7rpocrKvvr]Tal 7rpoo~KvvijcrovaL tw iraTpi Iv 
TTvivixari koI dXyjOeua — The hour cometh and now is, 
when the true worshippers shall worship the Father 
in spirit and in truth 2 — Ovre Iv to op el tovtco ovre iv 
'JepocroXu/xots — Neither in this mountain, nor at Jeru- 

1 JusJi. xxiv. 32. 2 John iv. 23. 



834 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



salem, 1 — would make it a monument of more than 
Christianity ; a monument of that great moral and 
subjective revolution of which Christianity was but one, 
and one of the later manifestations ; a sacred monu- 
ment of that great revolt against the local and objective 
Nature- worships of the Ancient World, that Eevolution 
which, in the Sixth Century B.C., initiated the Modern 
Age. Much, therefore, were it to be desired that, as 
such a sacred monument, not of Christianity, but of 
Humanity, this pit were cleared out, and restored the 
ancient vaulted chamber in the floor of which was the 
true mouth of this "Well, digged by Jacob, and drunk 
of by Jesus. 

Soon after noon, through a most pitiable crowd 
of lepers, we rode into Shechem, — now called Nablus, 
from the 6 Neapolis,' or ' Newtown,' founded by 
Vespasian, — Shechem, the first halting-place in the 
Patriarchal legend, of Abraham, and first settlement 
of Jacob ; the first capital of the Israelites, after 
then conquest of the land ; and the seat of the 
chief national assemblies even for some time after the 
erection of Jerusalem into the capital ; the capital of 
the Northern Kingdom, till its place was taken by 
Samaria ; and, after the return from the Exile, the 
Sychar of the mixed settlers commonly called Samari- 
tans. One of the chief men of the but seventy families 
of them still remaining, and who spoke English very 
creditably, having been one of a political mission sent 
some years ago to Europe, we were fortunate enough 
to encounter ere we had ridden far through the town. 

1 John iv. 21. 



Chap. U. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 335 

So, sending our baggage-mules on to the camping - 
ground, we turned to ascend Mount Gerizim with our 
Samaritan friend. 

No need, however, here to describe this c Mountain 
of the Most High ' on which Abraham, after his return 
from the slaughter of 4 Chedorlaomer, and of the kings 
that were with him,' was met by ' Melchizedek, king 
of Salem (now Salim ?) . . . priest of the Most High 
God ; ' 1 the sacred area on the summit, with its hole 
for the roasting of the Paschal Lamb at the celebra- 
tion of the Samaritan Passover ; the massive ruins 
which, though probably but the remains of Justinian's 
fortress, are certainly on the foundations of the ancient 
Temple on the rocky crest of the mountain ; the line of 
rocky slabs, called the ' ten stones,' under the southern 
wall of the Temple, and which commemorated the ten 
(or twelve) stones brought by Joshua, and the ten 
tribes of the Northern Kingdom ; or, finally, the smooth 
rock to the east, the original sanctuary or altar, with 
its slope to a hole on the south side for the sewerage 
of the blood of victims. But ' opere peracto lude- 
mus.' So, after our study of the antiquities of this 
4 High Place,' we turned to the enjoyment of the glo- 
rious view it presents to rejoice in. We looked across 
to the twin-height of Ebal from which the Cursings of 
the Law were pronounced, as from this, the Blessings. 
Around, were the mountains and rich valleys of 
Ephraim, 4 the blessings on the head of Joseph, and on 
the head of him that was separate from his brethren.' 
On the east, the mountains beyond Jordan. On 

1 Genesis xiv. 17, 18. And see Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, p. 249. 



336 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



the north, snowy Hernion, and Lebanon. On the 
west, on a ridge of hills overlooking the plain of 
Sharon, a line of dark trees against the splendour of 
the Sea. 

We came down the other end of the hill by a 
fountain, an aqueduct, and gardens hid among trees, 
into the town, and so, through several arched and ill- 
smelling passages to the synagogue. Here we were 
shown the famous Samaritan MS. roll of the Penta- 
teuch. Hence we went with our friend to his well- 
built stone house ; were served with coffee on the flat 
roof ; and were introduced to his wife and child. After 
Mr. Buckle left, I remained for some time with our 
Samaritan friend, whose hospitality was, in several ways, 
of a very Oriental character. On parting with him, the 
scene, on the hill-slope above the Camp, was fair as a 
vision. Music, with youths and maidens, and dancing, 
on the greensward, under- the trees, in the many- 
coloured light of sunset. 

We were up by five o'clock next morning, and went 
into the town to the early service at the Synagogue. 
For it was their Sabbath (Saturday). And the Samari- 
tans, like all other Juclaized Gentiles, keep the day with 
great strictness. But the miserable formalism which 
not only disallows labour and trading, but also cooking, 
and even lighting a fire on the Sabbath, had its signi- 
ficant commentary in the mean look of their chapel, 
and the irreverent rattle of their worship. It was, 
however, in many ways, a most suggestive scene. In 
the first place, for instance, it suggested many religious 
and moral questions. How could men, so intelligent- 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 337 

looking as every one of them was, live in such a wor- 
ship ? Was their worship anything more than a means 
of keeping up their traditions, an occasion of meeting 
together, and an expression, less of a consciousness of 
God, than of a consciousness of Samaritanism ? And if 
they were without a religion of any wider and higher 
kind, what were the moral phenomena co-existing with 
so narrow an Ideal ? Again, the scene suggested many 
questions on the side of animal form, as well as on 
that of human consciousness. For the chiefs of these 
seventy in-and-in-breeding families were, every man of 
them, full six feet or upwards, erect, and well-propor- 
tioned ; with fine, though, of course, Jewish features ; 
beautifully clear fair complexions, and dark lustrous 
eyes. With the view of investigating these various 
questions, my desire to stay at least another day at 
Shechem naturally became even stronger than it had 
been the previous evening, when, with the view merely 
of obtaining all procurable MSS., I had urged some 
stay here. But Mr. Buckle, though he had as much 
interest in such questions as myself, and more capacity 
for their investigation, would on with the restless ex- 
citement to which, in the beginning of this chapter, I 
have alluded, and which seemed gaining on him. 

So, after returning from the Synagogue, we rode 
away, with extreme regret on my part, from the beau- 
tiful vale of Shechem with its vineyards, and gardens, 
its olive-groves, and orchards of apple, and apricot, 
pomegranate, and fig-trees ; the choral music of its 
ether-winging birds ; and— due to its innumerable bub- 

z 



338 



PILGRIM-MEMO UIES. 



Past IV. 



bling springs, and fairy burns, and brimming troughs — 
the enchantment of softest notes of colour, dying away 
in an exquisite haze. 

But without giving way to sentiment, we fell at 
once to our morning discussion. The subject of it — 
arising out of our remarks to each other on the remark- 
able handsomeness of the members of these seventy 
in-and-in-breeding Samaritan families — was, first, the 
question as to the effects of consanguineous marriages 
and of breeding in-and-in, and then the question gene- 
rally, as to the reality or not of distinctions of Eace. 
As to in-breeding, it was here evident to remark that, 
if the Samaritans did not deteriorate, they decreased. 
Bat then, as I said, I had tried, but had been unable 
distinctly to ascertain whether this arose only from 
sterility, or also from contrivance. And it is to be noted 
that, among the Bedouin Arabs, who seem neither to 
deteriorate or decrease, ' daughter of my uncle ' is, and 
in general accurately, a synonym for wife. 

On our discussion passing to the larger question of 
Eace, Mr. Buckle declared original distinctions of Eace 
to be altogether hypothetical. He even went so far as 
to say that we have no decisive ground for saying that 
the moral and intellectual faculties of man are likely to 
be greater in an infant born in the most civilised part 
of Europe, than in one born in the wildest region of a 
barbarous country : no decisive ground, that is, for say- 
ing that the innate faculties of an aboriginal Austra- 
lian are less than those of an English, a fortiori, an 
Anglo- Australian infant. And with characteristic frank- 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 339 



ness, 1 lie pointed to the phrenological indications of his 
own head — his forehead having been, before he became 
bald, not even apparently by any means very high or 
broad ; and yet, — but it was the circumstances of his 
life. 

Opposing these views, I argued that, if one went to 
the bottom of them, they would, be found to be but 
another form of affirming that exclusive, or, at least, 
predominant importance of the Formal or External 
element which was the characteristic of the Materialist 
School, and the cause of all the philosophical disagree- 
ment there was between us. His opinion as to the 
nullity of Eacial Distinctions was certainly quite logical, 
in so far as it was quite consistent with his main doc- 
trine as to the non-effect of Moral Forces as historical 
causes. For, in both cases, what he contended for was 
the exclusive, or at least predominant, effect of External 
Conditions. But thus was illustrated what I had re- 
curred to yesterday, and had maintained from the 
beginning, namely, that the principles of a complete 
Historical Method must be derived from a really 
organic reconciliation of Idealism and Materialism ; and 
this, from a new solution of the fundamental problem 
of the nature of Knowledge ; and intimately related 
as this apparently merely physical question as to Eace 
is thus seen to be with the metaphysical question as to 
Knowledge, the true solution of both will be derived 
from the same fundamental principle. As I had said, 

1 Compare the anecdote above-quoted from the Atlantic Monthly, 
or Appendix II. 

z 2 



340 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



it was froni the development of the conception of 
Mutual Determination that I hoped to be able to give 
at least a more approximately true solution of the 
problem as to Knowledge. And from the same prin- 
ciple it was that I would derive the solution of the 
problem as to Eace. For, as I ventured to think, neither 
the problem of Knowledge nor that of Eace had Mr. 
Spencer 1 solved by the attention he had called to the 
fact of accumulated experiences, and the hereditary 
transmission of their results. All that might be true. 
But still, without some Internal Spontaneity, External 
Conditions could have no effect, and Experience, there- 
fore, no beginning. The thing, then, that seems to be 
required is a relative, and not, as hitherto, in the Idealist 
School, an absolute definition of this Internal Spon- 
taneity. And as to the question of Eace, and the more 
general one of Origin, in which, indeed, it merges, — my 
views would lead to the conception of differentiating 
forces co-existing with, or innate in the parts of Matter 
themselves ; and would also lead us to expect to 
discover Laws, not merely of sequential, but of cor- 
relative Origins. 

But already Samaria, on the side of its broad 
isolated hill, in the centre of a mountain-encircled vale, 
had suddenly burst on our view from the ridge we had 
attained after a long ascent. Latterly, our discussion 

1 Of Mr. Herbert Spencer's First Principles, Mr. Buckle had justly 
said, in a note (vol. ii. p. 489) : 1 The title of this book gives an inade- 
quate notion of the importance of the subjects with which it deals, and 
of the reach and subtlety of thought which characterize it. Though 
some of the generalizations appear to me rather premature, no well- 
instructed and disciplined intellect can consider them without admira- 
tion of the remarkable powers displayed by the author.' 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 341 

had been carried- on in an equally long descent through 
olive-groves. And now, we had before us the climb 
up the ruin-lined path which was to bring us on the 
site of this ancient royal capital. 

I wish I could make the reader in some degree 
realise the effect on myself, at least, of the constant 
sudden transitions, in Sinai and Palestine especially, 
from that atmosphere of Modern European Thought, 
in which our discussions were conducted, into that of 
Ancient Oriental Superstition, and Modern Orthodox 
Belief, in which the Biblical sites we visited were en- 
veloped. Here, for instance, ending our discussion of 
those great problems which had been occupying us 
during our ride from Shechem ; lying down on the 
green and grassy sward, amid the fallen columns of 
the magnificent JSTew Samaria, or Sebaste of Herod the 
Great, and before the church built, in the old crusading 
times, by the Knights of St. John over the supposed 
&epulchre of their patron-saint, the Baptist ; and recalling 
here, on the very scene of them, the chief Biblical 
legends connected with Old Samaria, — the stories in 
which Elijah and Elisha figure so wonderfully, and 
Jehu and his God so atrociously, — could one but find 
it almost incredible that men, educated in the Modern 
West, should, in travelling through Palestine, realise as 
facts the Biblical stories they have been taught to 
hold sacred, and yet remain blind to the falsehood of 
their superstition, and the atrocity, often, of their mo- 
rality ? Can the reader not understand and sympathise 
with this incredulous astonishment ? Or does he indeed 
think that he could himself realise, on the very scene 



342 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



of it, Jehu's zeal for his God, and godfather Jehu-van 
and crafty slaughter of the worshippers of the rival 
Baal ; 1 could himself recall how, after this atrocious 
massacre, and the dastardly murders of which it was 
but the climax, 2 Jehu-vah said unto Jehu — 6 Because 
thou hast clone well in executing that which is right in 
mine eyes, and hast clone unto the house of Ahab ac- 
cording to all that was in mine heart, thy children of the 
fourth generation shall sit on the throne of Israel;' 3 — 
does the reader indeed think that he could himself 
realise the slaughter, and recall the commendation of 
it, and still believe that, of these two rivals, Baal and 
Yahveh (or Jehu-vah), either had ever any actual objec- 
tive existence ? But not merely astonishing, pernicious 
also, is the moral blindness caused by Christianity while 
connected with a supernatural J udaism ; pernicious, and 
therefore calling aloud on ' Infidelity ' to speak boldly 
and trenchantly out for the cure of it ; and that, al- 
though dissevered from supernatural Judaism, and from 
the mere Egyptian superstition of its orthodox dogmas, 
Christianity ceases undoubtedly to be Christianity, and 
becomes — Humanitarianism . 

We lunched in the shade of an olive-grove, and 
then, remounting our horses, we rode away from 
Samaria down towards the plain of Esdraelon, the 
apocalyptic battlefield of Armageddon. The roadside 
was all blue and yellow, red and white, with iris and 
marigold, scabias, convolvulus, and hollyhock, till we 
came to a beautiful circular plain called the Meadow of 



1 2 Kings x. 18-25. 



2 Ibid 6-8, 13-14. 

3 Ibid, 30. 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 343 



Drowning (Merj-el-Gliuruk), on the western side of 
which was a castle on a hill, the fortress of Sanur, once 
held by the Crusaders. And, keeping well together as 
we pass several armed robber-shepherds, we skirt 
the margin of the lake, and ascend, after a mile or so, 
a rocky slope to the crest of a ridge that is the northern 
frontier of the central hills of Palestine, once guarded 
by the tribe of Manasseh, famous in their hero Gideon. 
And from this height we looked down on a rich 
valley, and beyond, on a great plain. And in the 
valley was the green knoll of Dothan, or the Two 
Wells, with its legends of Joseph and of Elisha — singu- 
larly contrasted characters to stand side by side on this 
green knoll. For it was into one of these wells, it is 
said, that his brethren cast Joseph, before they sold him 
to the Arabian merchants. 1 And it was here that, 
when Benhaclad, the King of Syria, surrounded the 
village with chariots and horsemen to take Elijah, 
Yahveh, the king-god of Israel, checkmated the Syrian 
monarch with 4 horses and chariots of fire J 2 And 
further, when Elisha cursed the eyes of the Syrians, 
Yahveh 6 smote them with blindness according to the 
word of Elisha.' 3 Such are the legends of Dothan. 
And towards sunset we rode down among olive-groves 
and scattered palm-trees, and by hedges of prickly 
pear, to a fair meadow under a town called the Foun- 
tain of Gardens (En-gannim, Jeni). 

Early in the morning of the next day, the first 
Sunday after Easter, we mounted for our ride, escorted 



1 Genesis xxxyii. 17-28. 2 2 Kings vi. 18. 

3 Ibid. 18. 



344 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



by a party of troopers, across the plain of Jezreel, 
in the Greek tongue Esdraelon, the battlefield of Pales- 
tine, as the plain of Stirling was of Scotland, the an- 
cient Plain of Megiddo, 6 the place which is called in 
the Hebrew tongue Armageddon,' 1 the apocalyptic 
scene of the final i battle of the Great Day of God 
Almighty.' 2 This famous plain may be briefly de- 
scribed as a triangle, with a base towards the Jordan 
and the Lake of Gennesareth, of about a dozen miles ; 
an apex, about half-a-mile wide, through which flows 
' that ancient river ' Kishon, into the Bay of Akka (St. 
Jean d'Acre) ; a northern side, measuring about twelve 
miles, formed by the hills of Galilee ; and a southern 
side, about eighteen miles in length, formed by the 
hills of Samaria and Mount Carmel. The base of this 
triangular plain is broken into three valleys by the two 
bleak ridges of Little Hermon and Mount Gilboa. The 
north-eastern valley, with Little Hermon to the south, 
has the wooded and dome-like Tabor, the traditional 
Mount of the Transfiguration, to the north ; and beyond 
it, away towards the lake, the Mount of Beatitudes, the 
hill of Hattin. In this vale are Enclor and Nain. 
The middle valley, with, of course, Little Hermon and 
Gilboa north and south, has Shunem on the flanks of 
the former ; Jezreel on the crest of a low spur project- 
ing from the latter ; and Bethshean or Scythopolis at 
its end towards the Jordan. Towards the head of the 
south-western valley is Jenin ; and at its opening into 
the great plain opposite Jezreel, and in a recess of the 
hills of Samaria, is Megiddo. 

1 Revelation xvi. 16. 2 Ibid. 14. 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF AIIMAGEDDOX. 34o 



Section II. 

It was at that central and widest part of the plain 
of Esdraelon, which, says Dean Stanley, may, for the 
sake of distinction, be specially termed ' the plain of 
Megiddo ' 1 or Armageddon, that we crossed. And as 
I observed, in the bright morning, the exceeding rich- 
ness of this ancient possession of Issachar, 4 the strong 
ass couching down between two burdens,' or, as it 
should rather be translated, ' troughs,' 2 the luxuriance 
of the crops wherever cultivation redeemed a patch of 
wild pasture-land ; the palm-trees, and the fencing 
masses of wild artichoke at the few villages on the 
slopes of the hill-ranges, or on the eminences in the 
midst of the strath ; the wealth of wild flowers, and 
the giant size of the thistles ; the cranes in the long 
grass, the quails, and the partridges, I could not re- 
frain from a remark that led to the most animated of all 
our discussions, and alas ! in fact, as well as in logic, the 
last. For I also observed the black tents and the 
roving parties of the wild Arabs from beyond the 
Jordan, who made our escort necessary ; and we knew 
that not more than a sixth of this glorious plain is 
cultivated ; and that, except in its eastern branches, 
there are scarce more than the sites of villages and 
towns. 

Author. What infamous imsgovemnient ! How 
long is it to be allowed ? Would that Egypt, Syria, 
and the Euphrates Valley were ruled by British Go- 
vernors-General ! 



1 Sinai and Palestine, pp. 335-6. 



Genesis xlix. 14. 



346 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



Mr. Buckle. You surprise me. I think that the 
entertaining of such a scheme would be criminal, if it 
were not utterly extravagant. 

A. As to its extravagance, it might well be charge- 
able with that, if it were imagined possible soon to 
carry it out. But I have already, in the East, seen 
enough of the strength of the passions, and the com- 
plication of the interests, involved in the Eastern Ques- 
tion, to make me readily admit the wisdom of delaying 
the solution of it. As to the criminality, however, of 
at least keeping in view the probability of these Turkish 
Pashalics having, at no distant date, European Gover- 
nors, and hence, taking care that these European Go- 
vernors be ourselves ; I think that, considering the cha- 
racter of the rule of those who would step in if we did 
not, and considering further, our duty to India, and to 
ourselves with respect to India, the criminality would 
be all the other way. 1 None, indeed, could hold more 
strongly than I do the principle of Nationality ; nor 
would any one more earnestly oppose external inter- 
ference with a people which had really distinctive 
traditions, energies, and aspirations. But the partition 
of Turkey would be a very different affair from the 
partition of Poland. The real Turkey, or country 
inhabited by Turks, is only the promontory of Asia 
Minor. In Egypt, Syria, and Mesopotamia, the Turks 

1 Compare what Mr. J. S. Mill says of our assumption of the 
government of Oude: 'The act by which the Government of British 
India .... assumed the power of fulfilling the obligation it had so 
long before incurred, of giving to the people of Oude a tolerable govern- 
ment, far from being the political crime it is so often ignorantly called, 
was a criminally tardy discharge of an imperative duty.' — A Few Words 
on Non-intervention. Eraser's Magazine, December 1859, pp. 772-3. 



CHAr. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 347 



are simply but a handful of foreign, and extremely 
misgoverning, conquerors. As, however, the mixed 
native, but Arabic-speaking populations of these coun- 
tries have nothing that can be called national traditions, 
energies, and aspirations, and present, therefore, none 
of the conditions of capability of self-government, they 
must be governed by some foreign power. And for 
themselves, as well as for us, I think it would be best 
that that power should be Britain. 

B. I regret to say that I utterly disagree with 
you. 

A. Well, I think I might justify what I have said by 
arguing from the fundamental principles of the Law of 
Property. For on what is the right of a Landowner 
to his estates founded, but on the public expediency of 
private possession ? But such right ceases, if the cor- 
relative duties, which make the public guaranteeing of 
it expedient, are neglected. And what right, then, have 
the Turks to Syria if so magnificent a region of the 
earth is permitted to lie in such barbarous insecurity 
and unproductiveness, as we have here, on this plain of 
Esdraelon, but one illustration of? Of course, how- 
ever, I must admit that there is this slight objection to 
such an application of Property-law principles — there 
is, in this case, no Superior Authority to judge of the 
expediency of their application, and to enforce them. 

B. Such a partition as you speak of is, I think, to 
be judged and condemned simply on the general prin- 
ciple of Non-intervention ; which, as I hold, forbids 
all interference of one government, or nation, as of one 
individual, with another. 



348 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



A. You appear to look on Non-intervention as 
a merely negative law. I regard it as no less affirmative 
than negative. For consider the history of this prin- 
ciple of Non-intervention. It had, I believe, its first 
clear official expression by French statesmen in 1830. 
6 France,' said Lafitte, the President of the Chamber of 
Deputies, 6 will not allow any violation of the principle 
of Non-intervention.' But on what was this declara- 
tion expressly founded ? Why, on the fact that 6 the 
Holy Alliance had made it a fundamental principle to 
suffocate popular Liberty wheresoever it should raise 
its standard.' Or, in the words of the Minister for 
Foreign Affairs, ' the Holy Alliance was founded on the 
principle of Intervention for the overthrow of the in- 
dependence of all secondary states.' It was against 
this Holy- Alliance-principle that the principle of Non- 
intervention was first proclaimed. Hence, it was defined 
as the principle of ' allowing the unimpeded develop- 
ment of Liberty wheresoever it may spontaneously arise.' 
Limited, then, to its original significance, I as decidedly 
approve of Non-intervention as yourself. But thus 
relatively conceived, it is evidently as much of an affir- 
mative, as of a negative principle. For the principle 
of Non-intervention, thus defined, may become a very 
decided principle of Intervention ; and might become, 
indeed, the very principle on which both our interfe- 
rence with Turkey might be defended, and that of, for 
instance, a Russian aggressor resisted. 1 

B. Certainly Non-intervention would become with 

1 Compare Mill : A Few Words on Non-intervention. Fraser's Maga- 
zine, 1859, p. 775. 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 



349 



you a very elastic principle, and serviceable instru- 
ment. 

A. Well, be it so, if you like. That won't drive 
me from my position. 

B. But, whatever the historical origin of the prin- 
ciple of Non-intervention, philosophically it is to be 
derived from the principle of Liberty ; and that, I hold, 
to be not a means to an end, but an end itself. 1 

A. On the contrary, I hold Liberty to be not an 
end, but a means. But how would you define it ? 

B. Liberty I would define as the right to do, or 
not to do, anything not directly injurious to others. 2 

A. Exactly, and in perfect consistency with your 
conception of the Summum Bonum. 3 But I would 
rather, and with the Idealist School generally, define 
Liberty as the faculty of choosing, among the various 
modes of fulfilling duty, those most in harmony with 
our own tendencies. Thus conceived, Liberty is a 
principle, not of individual rights merely, but of social 
duties. And it is thus a positive, not merely a nega- 
tive principle. For Liberty, as the principle of indi- 
vidual rights, does no more than negative the inter- 
ference of you with others, or of others with you. But 
Liberty, understood not merely as uninterfered-with 
action, but as spontaneously-fulfilled duty, conditionally 
only negatives interference. For Liberty, thus con- 
ceived, implies an authoritative Ideal. And evidently 
thus it proclaims itself as a means only, and not as 
an end. 



1 Comp ( are Miscel. and Post. Works. Mill on Liberty. 

2 Ibid. 3 Above, p. 240. 



350 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



B. But such views as yours would take away all 
guarantees for the maintenance of the great principle 
of Toleration. 

A. I exceedingly dislike the word. Toleration, 
properly speaking, can be, and has in fact historically 
been, offered only by those who endeavoured to carry 
off their inability to suppress, by an insolent assump- 
tion of superiority in permitting. Letting the word, 
however, pass, my views would not, I think, have the 
effect you suggest, but that rather of transforming the 
principle of Toleration from a merely negative, into a 
positive one ? 

B. How so ? 

A. Why, Toleration historically arose among Chris- 
tians simply out of the conflict of sects, each of which 
had refused when it had the upper hand, what it 
claimed when the upper hand was on it. For Tolera- 
tion has no basis in a Creed which has proclaimed from 
the very days of its Founder that ' he who belie veth 
shall be saved, and he who belie veth not shall be 
damned.' Declamation, therefore, by believing Chris- 
tians, about Toleration, is but a plea to be tole- 
rated in order to be intolerant ; and, with unbelieving 
Christians, it is but an expression of their belief that 
there is nothing true, and it don't matter. In such 
Toleration there is nothing great. Toleration, really to 
become a great principle, must, as the principles like- 
wise of Non-intervention, and of Liberty, be derived 
from a new ideal of Human Life. And derived from 
a great synthetic conception, these principles would 
.assuredly no longer appear as mere unlimited negative?. 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 351 

B. But I should require to have some more definite 
notion than you have yet given me of that ideal, or 
synthetic conception, from which you would derive 
these principles, and by which, as I understand, you 
would, at the same time, limit their scope. 

A. That will take us back to our discussion of the 
Sunrmum Bonum. You may remember that the con- 
clusion of it was that I thought the characteristic 
ethical views of Idealists and Materialists might be re- 
conciled in some such definition of the Highest Good 
as — A Will, having as its aim self-oneness, in order to, 
and resulting in, oneness with others, and the oneness 
of each with all. But such a definition evidently im- 
plies that the ideal of Human Existence, or the end of 
Progress, is conceived as a state in which there co-exists, 
with a vast diversity of individual effort, an organic 
union of all ; a state in which individual effort not only 
is, but is felt to be but the exercise of a function in a 
variously constituted organic life ; a state, in a word, 
of Co-oneness, the result, not of external restraint only, 
but of internal constraint. 

B. Well, one cannot be sure of understanding 
what is meant by such general expressions, without 
some illustration, or application of them. 

A. Perhaps this conception of what I call Co-one- 
ness may be most clearly illustrated by contrasting it 
with what may be distinguished as, respectively, the De- 
mocratic and the Aristocratic Ideals. The pure Demo- 
cratic Ideal seems to be that of a homogeneous mass, 
all the parts of which are equal, not only in happiness, 
but in capacity. But a dreary outcome, I should think 



352 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt IV. 



it of Progress, if it were really to end in such a reduc- 
tion of Humanity to a condition analogous to that of 
inorganic existence. The Aristocratic Ideal — 

B. Well, whatever you may think of the Demo- 
cratic, the fate of the Aristocratic Ideal, as that of 
Aristocratic Power, is hardly a matter respecting which 
much doubt can now be entertained. 

A. You seem to me to identify the Aristocratic 
Ideal with what I think is but a temporary feature of 
it — hereditary privilege. That, no doubt, is doomed. 
For the population of, at least, every European state is 
now sufficiently mixed as to race, and has sufficiently 
general means of education, to give the lie to any class - 
assumption of real hereditary superiority. But, of the 
general Aristocratic Ideal, as I conceive it, this fea- 
ture of hereditary privilege is but accidental. It is 
simply the conception of a system of which the parts 
are of various orders and degrees of capacity, and by 
this very diversity bound together. And it is thus, I 
think, both a finer and truer conception than that of 
the all-equal Democratic Ideal. 

B. As to its being a truer conception, that will, I 
think, be found to depend on whether there is really 
any innate difference in the moral and intellectual 
faculties of men ; or whether, as I am disposed to be- 
lieve, all such differences have not their cause merely in 
diverse External Conditions ; that is, in those differences 
of external advantage which it is the aim of Democracy, 
as I understand it, to equalise. 

A. No doubt, were we to discuss the question as to 
whether there is more truth in what I have called the 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 



general Aristocratic, than in what I have distinguished 
as the pure Democratic Ideal, we should be led to the 
question as to whether the differences in moral and intel- 
lectual faculties are, or are not, wholly due to External 
Conditions ; but we should then also be brought back 
to that question of Eace which we discussed yesterday ; 
and indeed, to that more general question as to the re- 
lative importance of the Internal, and of the External 
Element which has been really at issue in all our dis- 
cussions. We had better, however, keep to the subject 
we are more directly considering. And I defined those 
two antagonistic conceptions which I have called the 
Democratic and Aristocratic Ideals, merely in order to 
illustrate, by contrasting with both of them, what I 
meant by those general expressions in which I at- 
tempted to define what I conceive to be the ideal of 
Human Existence, or the end of Progress. That Ideal, 
as I conceive it, agrees with the Democratic in so far 
as it implies the greatest possible equalisation of ex- 
ternal advantages, and hence freeest possible scope for 
individual effort. But that Ideal disagrees with the De- 
mocratic, and agrees with the Aristocratic Ideal in this, 
that it is the conception of a system of very diverse, 
and diversely functioning parts ; which, however, arise, 
and are maintained, through innate differences, rather 
than differences of external advantage ; or, in a word, 
naturally, and not artificially. 

B. Well, leaving the question as to innate diffe- 
rences, let me hear how, in your view, such an Ideal 
would affect the notions ordinarily entertained^of Non- 
intervention, Liberty, and Toleration. For, if I remem- 

A A 



354 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



ber rightly, it was your dissatisfaction with my concep- 
tion of these principles that led to your defining what 
you conceived to be the ideal of Human Existence. 

A. Take the central principle of all, Liberty. Is it 
not really transformed by being derived from such a 
Social Ideal as I have endeavoured to define, and by 
being conceived as but the means towards the realisa- 
tion of such an Ideal? Individuals, or a people, with 
no consciousness of any but a negative relation to 
others, claim and exercise their liberty but for their 
single satisfaction ; and their liberty must thus ever be 
in danger of degenerating into license. Individuals, 
on the other hand, or a people, conscious of a positive 
relation to others, knowing and feeling themselves to 
be parts in a greater existence, claim liberty that they 
may fulfil duty ; and their activities are thus, at once, 
guided and limited. And Liberty being thus con- 
ceived, not as an end, but as a means, Non-intervention 
and Toleration become changed, as it appears to me, 
into affirmative, rather than negative principles. For 
they dictate to the Statesman now rather interference, 
than absolute Laissez /aire ; but interference for the 
widening of Liberty, and the realisation of the Ideal of 
Humanity. 

B. Which comes, in fact, to bringing back that 
spirit of Protection which has been the chief foe of 
Progress. 

A. Protection, in the large way in which you have 
considered it, there will certainly, I think, always be 
when there is an established and generally recognised 
Ideal. And if I agree with you as to the mischief 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 355 



wrought, in these late centuries at least, by what you 
call the 6 protective spirit,' I thus agree merely because 
I consider that Christian Ideal, which has hitherto 
mainly guided this £ protective spirit,' false, and now 
pernicious. 

B. But what guarantee have Ave that what you 
speak of as the new Ideal of Humanity is not equally 
false ? 

A. iSfo complete guarantee certainly can we have 
of its truth except in the verification of an Ultimate 
Law explaining all the course of Man's History as a 
progress towards such an ideal state. Hence, therefore, 
the immense practical importance that I attach to the 
discovery of such a Law. For a really effective principle 
of Authority must ever be objective also as well as 
subjective ; have its source, that is, in outward, or, 
like the Christian Eevelation, supposed outward fact, 
as well as in the inward testimony of conscience, or 
conviction. 

B. Well, till such a Law be discovered, if dis- 
coverable it be, and such an Ideal as you speak of be 
established, I am persuaded that the only services 
that any Government can render to the interests of civi- 
lisation are to maintain order, to prevent the strong from 
oppressing the weak, and to adopt certain precautions 
respecting the public health. 

A. You limit, then, 4 the sphere and duties of 
Government ' more strictly even than Wilhelm von 
Humboldt himself in his famous essay. 1 But it seems 

1 Ideen zu einem Versuch die Granzen der Wirksamkeit des Staats zu 
bestimmen, written in 1791, but not published till after his death, aud 



356 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



to me that there are indications of the rise of a new 
political school, a school which, even because it better 
understands the end and aim of Liberty, will concede 
to Government more than the powers of a Police, and 
which will acknowledge as great Statesmen only those 
who know how, by their acts, not only to follow, but 
to lead Public Opinion. 

B. I know nothing of such a school as that of 
which yon speak. And the business of a Statesman is 
certainly to follow the age, not at all to attempt to 
lead it, and to look upon his craft as consisting merely 
in the adaptation of temporary contrivances to tempo- 
rary emergencies. With the single exception of ques- 
tions connected with the accumulation and distribution 
of wealth, every department of politics is purely empi- 
rical, and is likely long to remain so. This, Burke 
clearly saw. Nor is anything more remarkable in his 
character than the singular sobriety with which, not- 
withstanding his power as an original and speculative 
thinker, he changed his method the moment he set 
foot on political ground. Political principles are with 
him at best but the product of human reason, while 
political practice has to do with human nature and 

as the seventh and concluding volume of his Gesa?nmelte W erke. And 
not only did Mr. Buckle thus limit the duty of the State and the func- 
tion of the statesman more than Humboldt, but more also than Mill, 
who would have, for instance, the State, not indeed, undertake, ' unless 
Society were in a very backward condition/ but certainly enforce educa- 
tion. — On Liberty, pp. 190, fig. The discussion of the subject in the 
Fortnightly Review, 1871, by Professor Huxley and Mr. Spencer 
{Administrative Nihilism, and Specialised Administration), will be fresh 
in the recollection of readers. See their papers, as republished in the 
Critiques and Addresses of the former, and in vol. iii. of the Essays, 
Scientific, Political, and Speculative, of the latter. 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 357 



human passions, of which reason forms but a part ; 
and hence, the proper business of a Statesman is, to 
contrive the means by which certain ends may be 
effected, leaving it to the general voice of the country 
to determine what those ends shall be ; and shaping 
his own conduct, not according to his own principles, 
but according to the wishes of the people for whom 
he legislates, and whom he is bound to obey. 

A. Well, I am quite ready to admit the justifica- 
tion that may be found for such views, not only in the 
actual state of our knowledge, but in the mischief that 
has unquestionably been done, not merely by legisla- 
tion essentially bad, but by legislation essentially good, 
if it happens to be too much in advance of popular 
development. Still — 

B. Could any stronger proof, and clearer illustra- 
tion, be found of the futility, or positive mischievous- 
ness, of the attempt to force progress by legislation 
than that afforded by the history of Spain ? For nearly 
ninety years, or three generations previous to the death 
of Charles III. in 1788. improvement upon improve- 
ment, and reform upon reform, followed each other in 
swift succession ; without one pause on the part of 
the government ; not one reaction, or sign of halting. 
But what did it all come to ? Wise as it appeared, this 
policy of reform was of no avail, and simply because 
it ran counter to the whole train of preceding circum- 
stances. In Spain, during the eighteenth century, 
foreign influence, and the complications of foreign 
politics bestowed enlightened rulers upon an unen- 
lightened country. The consequence was that, for a 



358 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



time, great things were done. But no reform can pro- 
duce real good, unless it is the work of public opinion, 
and unless the people themselves take the initiative. 

A. No doubt, no doubt. 

B. A century before ourselves, the Spaniards could 
boast of free institutions. We had no popular repre- 
sentation till 1264 ; but in Castile they had it in 1169 ; 
and in Arragon in 1133. But in Spain these institu- 
tions, instead of growing out of the wants of the people, 
originated in a stroke of policy on the part of their 
rulers. In England, the spirit preceded the form, and 
therefore the form was durable. Spain had the form 
of liberty without the spirit, and hence, the form, pro- 
mising as it was, soon died away. 

A. But do not imagine that I disagree with you in 
all that, because I do not agree with you in thinking 
that the function of the Statesman is no higher than 
that of, as you say, c a mere adaptation of temporary 
contrivances to temporary emergencies.' On the con- 
trary, I think there is no such absolute distinction 
between the Laws of Science and the Laws of Legisla- 
tion as the Austin-school affirm. For if an enacted 
law is not, like a discovered law, an expression of rela- 
tions either already existing, or which, in consequence 
of relations already existing, will easily come into exis- 
tence, it wants, as I hold, an attribute of a true law 
just as essential as that 6 command of a superior ' which, 
with Austin, is everything. rTot only, therefore, do I, 
so far, entirely agree with you in all you have just said, 
but I deduce that agreement with you from my funda- 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 359 



mental conception of a true Law of Legislation as an 
expression of relations that shall be, only because they 
are, or can be. And just as a false Law of Science is 
an expression of relations that are not ; a false Law of 
Legislation is an expression of relations that can not 
be. But a false Law of Science, — an expression of re- 
lations not in accordance with actual facts, — is really 
no law at all ; nor any more is a Law of Legislation, 
not in accordance with actual facts, truly a law. 6 Laws 
proper, or properly so called,' says Austin, with his 
irritatingly pedantic tautology, 4 Laws proper, or pro- 
perly so called, are commands.' ISTo ! I say, that is 
but half the definition. They are ' commands ' that 
give, and that but aim at giving, a determined order 
and direction to relations already existing, or that tend 
to come into existence. If Laws are but commands, 
they should be called commands, and not Laws at all. 
A Law of Legislation, or what Austin calls a 4 Law 
proper, or properly so called,' if truly a Law, differs 
from a Law of Science, or what he calls a 6 Law meta- 
phorical or figurative, or merely metaphorical or figu- 
rative,' only in this, that, while the latter is merely an 
expression of discovered relations, the former is also a 
regulation of discovered relations. And a legislative 
enactment truly entitled to be called a Law is thus 
simply a rule of Social Art founded ou, and implying 
a discovery in, Social Science. Evidently, therefore, 
I must entirely agree with you as to the mischievous- 
ness or futility of Laws that are merely the ' com- 
mands of a superior,' and are wholly wanting in that 



360 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



essential characteristic, as I think, of true Laws, ac- 
cordance with those social facts and tendencies that are 
the 'superior's' superior. 

B. Well, without entering into any discussion at 
present of Austin's views of Law, I would merely ask 
how it is that, with such views as you have yourself 
just expressed, you think the function of the Statesman 
can be anything else than, as I have said, a mere adap- 
tation of temporary contrivances to temporary emer- 
gencies ? 

A. I differ from you as to the functions of the 
Statesman on these three grounds. In the first place, 
I think that, if a Law runs in the direction of even a 
minor tendency, its influence in strengthening and de- 
veloping that tendency is enormous ; and thus a great 
Statesman has, in legislation, immense opportunities of 
handicapping tendencies for the benefit of that one 
which he backs to win. I further think that that wis- 
dom of Burke which you so much applaud — his desire 
merely to follow the public inclination — is but the 
wisdom of a transitional age, in which all old be- 
liefs are shaken, and no new beliefs are formed. And 
thirdly, I think that the great Statesman will now re- 
cognise, in all the manifestations of Public Opinion, two 
more and more definitely adverse sets of Opinions, and 
will make it his business, by every art of policy, to 
strengthen and develop the progressive set of Opi- 
nions. In a word, the Modern Ee volution is a Conflict 
of Opinions, and the great Statesman now will be he 
who, clearly recognising this, can best work everything 
that influences Opinion, — the public expression of it, 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 361 



legislation, and foreign policy, — all to the single great 
end of killing-out the old, false, and now pernicious 
Opinions, and fostering the growth of the new. 

B. You think the Statesman should make it his busi- 
ness to kill-out a certain set of opinions ? That is the func- 
tion of the Writer. Nothing but mischief could ensue 
from the powers of the State being wielded for such a 
purpose. The old horrors of intolerance would be thus 
revived. And you seem to me, indeed, with such views, 
to deprive yourself of all right to complain of the into- 
lerance that, before the salutary spread of scepticism, 
was practised, not by Eomanists only, but by Pro- 
testants. 

A. I think not. For it is not the mere fact of the 
repression by Christians of doctrines which they con- 
ceived to be not only false but pernicious, that I object 
to, but the means which they have used for the sup- 
pression of obnoxious doctrines. To withdraw all State- 
endowments, and all State-recognition, from those who 
preach doctrines believed to be not only false but per- 
nicious ; and more — to throw every obstacle, short of 
positive forbiddal, in the way of the dissemination of 
such doctrines ; to treat the preachers of them as, what- 
ever their pretensions, mere sectaries whose titles can 
be recognised only by their adherents ; and sternly to 
expose the falsehood and perniciousness of their doc- 
trines, I think not only justifiable, but a duty. 1 But a 

1 'Let us have full toleration/ says Professor Huxley, in noticing an 
essay of Miss Taylor's entitled ' A New Attack on Toleration ' (Fort- 
niylitly Review, December 1871). 'Let us have full toleration by all 
means upon all questions in which there is room for doubt, or which 
cannot be distinctly proved to affect the welfare of mankind. But when 



3(32 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV; 



very different sort of intolerance has been that logi- 
cally derived from, and justifiable by, the hideous 
superstition of God's eternal torturing of those who 
don't believe a certain alleged historical fact. And, 
however bent a Statesman might be on killing -out 
Eomanism, say, there need be no fear of the repeal of 
such essentially anti- Christian acts as those by whicli 
all religionists, whatever their creed, have been tole- 
rated in their worship, and emancipated from their 
civil disabilities ; and, still less, any fear of such into- 
lerance as the very hatred of Christian Orthodoxy, and 
its Gospel-persecutions, must make for ever hateful. 

B. That may be true. But such an aim and sucli 
action on the part of a Statesman as that which you 
advocate could be justified only by his having far 
greater assurance than is as yet possible, not only that 
the set of opinions he favoured were the true ones, 
but that his interference in their favour could have 
permanently beneficial results. And at present, at 
least, and probably for long to come, the less high the 
notion a Statesman entertains of his craft, the better he 
will serve his employers. 

A. But suppose a great general Law of Human 
Development discovered ; such a Law, for instance, as 

Miss Taylor has shown what basis exists for criminal legislation except 
the clear right of mankind not to tolerate that which is-<lemonstrably 
contrary to the welfare of society, I will admit that such demonstration 
ought only to be believed in by the " curates and old women " to whom 
she refers. Recent events have not weakened the conviction I expressed in 
a much-abused speech at the London School-Board, that Ultramonta- 
nism is demonstrably the enemy of society, and must be met with resist- 
ance, merely passive, if possible, but active, if necessary, by the whole 
power of the State.' — Critiques and Addresses, p. 9. 



Chai\ II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 3G3 



that which Comte stated in formulising, though with- 
out the slightest acknowledgment, 1 Hume's 4 Theory of 
the Natural History of Eeligion ; ' such a Law, but 
more clear and definite in its expression, and more 
general and complete in its verification, and converted 
besides from an empirical into a rational Law by 
integrating with it some general Law of Thought. 
Would not that make a difference in your estimate of 
the functions of the Statesman ? The end of Progress, 
and ideal of Social Existence, would then be, not your 
conception of it merely, or mine ; but a conception of 
it having its verification in all the facts verificative of 
such a general Law ; and a conception, therefore, 
which, worked-out and applied, would not only be a 
sure guide of policy, but a popular stimulant to action 
of the most enthusiasm-stirring kind, — giving, indeed, 
to men again, but in a new form, that old tremendous 
battle-cry, invincible in the lightning energies that 
sprang from it, and appalling in its thunders — ' God 
wills it ! God wills it ! ' — With us are all the progressive 
forces of Human Development, and down must go 
opposition ! — el 6 Oeos vnep t^ugj^, ris ac<x#' 7](jlcov ; — 
4 if God be for us, who can be against us ? ' 2 

B. You seem to me to picture but a new fanaticism. 

A. Very likely, were a great Law of History, a 
Law not only interpreting the past, but predicting the 
future, discovered, and, in verifications wide, varied 
and accurate, brought home to men, there would be 
some degree of enthusiastic ardour, readily, by oppo- 

1 See In the Morningland, vol. i. p. 199-200. 

2 Bom. viii. 31. 



364 



P1L GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



sition, kindled into fanaticism, in the attempt to realise 
its predictions. For I think it the silliest of dreams to 
imagine that Christian Orthodoxy, with the immense 
wealth, elaborate organisation, and intense passion of 
its adherents, will surrender its influence on education, 
and submit to the transformation of those social insti- 
tutions identified with it, without the most fanatical 
resistance. Herein, indeed, is the tragic element of 
the Eevolution. For if there is fanaticism on one side 
it must be excited also on the other, if that other side 
is to conquer. Hence, all the horrors of miserable mis- 
understandino; and remorseless hate. But fanaticism 
is the velocity-element in political momentum. And 
in politics, as in mechanics, things can be accomplished 
when the velocity is high which, however large the 
mass, are impossible when the velocity is infinitesimal. 

For the first and only time in the whole course of 
our discussions Mr. Buckle replied with some asperity, — 
(as the reader may very likely think was more than 
justified,) — an asperity, however, which was, after all, 
so slight that, as discussions, particularly on Politics, 
are ordinarily conducted, it would, in any other case, 
have been hardly remarked or remembered. In 
noting it, therefore, I mean but to honour his memory, 
and prove the admirable temper 1 with which he per- 
mitted and encouraged me, so much his j unior, to state 
— and no doubt often crudely enough — my antago- 
nistic views. And most excusable as it was, the irri- 
tation with which he replied soon showed itself to have 
been due chiefly to mere physical causes. 

1 Compare Biog. Notice, Miscel. and Post. Works, vol. i. p. xxxvi. 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 365 



Section III. 

Mr. Buckie had once interrupted the discussion 
to give expression to his exuberant feelings of health 
and hope. But a terrible irony is more often to be 
seen in the world than, even by a Schleiermacher, 
or Thirl wall 1 to be discovered in the tragic repre- 
sentations of it by Sophocles. And so, notwithstanding 
Mr. Buckle's exclamation that never before in his life 
had he felt so superabundant a vigour, he was sud- 
denly seized with illness ; and this discussion was not 
only logically our last, as one in which the difference 
of our philosophical principles appeared in the an- 
tagonism of their political consequences ; but it was 
actually our last, of any length, and this, owing to the 
succession of illnesses which were the grievously ironi- 
cal commentary on that exclamation of Mr. Buckle's 
as to his health and hope. For it was the weakening 
produced by these illnesses, and especially by that 
diarrhoea with which he was here seized, and of which 
he never got completely rid, that laid him open to the 
attack of the fatal fever at Damascus, little more than 
four weeks after this bright Sunday. Of this preliminary 
illness the proximate cause, no doubt, was, not so much 
a certain imprudence in diet, as over-fatigue. Tor Mr. 
Buckle had not, for twenty years, even mounted a 
horse ; and now we were riding all day long, and con- 
tinuously day after day, under a Syrian sun. But 
again, of this over-fatigue the cause is to be found in 
that over-excitement characteristic of the nervous tem- 

1 See Philological Museum, vii. pp. 483-537. 



366 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt IV. 



perament, and of which he had already given indica- 
tions. 1 And it was this excitement that concealed from 
himself how exhausted he really was, and tempted him 
to give expression to an exultation for which there 
was already, alas ! prepared a response of fatal irony. 

Instead, therefore, of crossing the plain by the 
usual route, which includes a visit to the royal Jezreel 
of Ahab, we had, in consequence of Mr. Buckle's 
illness, to take the more direct course by the ruins of 
the castle of Faba (el-Fuleh, the Bean), once held by 
the Knights of the Temple and of St. John. Here we 
rested for some time. And looking round from this 
central mound of what is more specially to be named 
the plain of Megiddo, or Armageddon, 2 I could not but 
have many thoughts respecting that great final battle 
of which the apocalyptic scene was so naturally 3 placed 
here by a Galilean fisherman, — a battle which I held 
to be certain. 

For though, in the spring of 1 862, it was still pos- 
sible for a man of Mr. Buckle's school 4 to imagine that 
the Modern Eevolution might get accomplished — the 
supernatural Christian Ideal be destroyed, and the 
natural Humanitarian Ideal be established — without a 
battle of Armageddon, a prolonged, and frightfully 
tragic conflict ; hardly, I should think, is such a fancy 

1 See above, pp. 328, 337. 2 See above, p. 345. 

3 1 For,' says Dean Stanley, 'if the Apocalypse proceeded from the hand 
of a Galilean fisherman, it is the more easy to understand why, with 
the scene of so many battles constantly before him, he should have 
drawn the figurative name of the final conflict between the hosts of Good 
and Evil from " the place which is called in the Hebrew tongue Arma- 
geddon," that is, the city or mountain of Megiddo.' — Sinai and Palestine, 
p. 338. 

4 Compare the opinions expressed by Mr. Buckle with reference to 
the Exhibition of 1851, Biographical Notice. 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 



367 



possible now, even for such dreamers as are, in general, 
the so-called 4 practical ' people, who consider only ma- 
terial interests, and hope everything from Free Trade, 
Peace Congresses, and Exhibitions. But differing from 
Mr. Buckle as to the importance of Moral Forces as 
historical causes, I naturally differed from him also as 
to the possibility, in the present state of human develop- 
ment, of a peaceful solution of religious and social 
questions, not only so fundamental as those now agi- 
tating society, but so necessarily, as it seemed to me, 
bringing Moral Forces into the most passionate anta- 
gonism. Nor did it seem to me improbable that the 
great final conflict of the Modern Eevolution might 
actually take place on the magnificent battlefield on 
which I looked forth. For the more thoroughly it is 
studied, the more clearly will it, I think, be seen how in- 
timately the settlement of the Eastern Question, — which 
is nothing less than the question of the political relations 
of Europe and Asia, — how intimately the settlement of 
this question is bound up with that of the great 
religious and social questions agitating Europe itself. 
And hence, the battle in which the Eastern Question 
will receive its final solution, and of which this plain 
of Esdraelon will so probably be the scene, will not 
improbably be the final battle also of the Modern 
Eevolution. 

Most unpleasant it, no doubt, is for comfortably 
circumstanced people, to hear of Eevolution, except at a 
distance, and as a mere fillip to the enjoyment of their 
own peaceful ease. And the wish being ever father 
to the thought, most natural it is that, in Broad- 
churchism and Moderate Liberalism, they should fancy 



368 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



that they have secured, not themselves only, but the 
world, from any really revolutionary change, either in 
religion, or in institutions. But the mischief of such a 
dream is the mischief of every dream that ignores 
actual facts and forces. These unfortunately go on, 
notwithstanding their being ignored. And going on, 
the dreams that have ignored them are found, when 
too late, to have but prevented preparation, deprived 
of control, and caused misery, not incalculable only> 
but needless. Let me then briefly note some reflections 
during our long rest on this central mound of the great 
battlefield of Armageddon. For whether it may, or 
may not, have been well that people should hitherto 
have so generally closed eye and ear to the vast scope, 
the heaven-and-earth-changing character, of the Eevo- 
lution in the midst of which they live ; most unde- 
sirable, I think, it now is that men should any longer 
comfort each other with the assurance that those sub- 
terranean thunders, ever and anon heard, and those 
eruptions that from time to time take place, mean 
nothing ; and that that crust on which their fair villas 
and vineyards stand is thick enough for long yet, if not 
for ever, to hold together, nor — though the lava-floods 
that, in encountering currents, heave wildly beneath it, 
are sweeping one huge rock-pillar after anotherjmto 
molten ruin, — likely soon to Ml in. 

Consider, then, first, the facts of the intellec- 
tual, moral, and social Eevolution. Note, secondly, 
the antagonism, if not between Eeligion and Science, 
between Christianism and Science ; the facts of 
Human Misery under existing social institutions ; 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 3G0 

and the connection of the most fundamental of these 
with the supernatural Christian Ideal, and of all of 
them with each other. And consider, thirdly, those 
facts of presently existing, and antagonistic human 
passion and aspiration winch make a peaceful solu- 
tion of the problems of the Ee volution utterly beyond 
possibility. 

First, then, as to the facts of the intellectual Bevo- 
lution. Surely it must be evident to everyone, even 
moderately acquainted with the facts of contemporary 
thought, and capable of reflection on them, that, how- 
ever some pretty compromise of theological liberalism 
may satisfy himself, such compromises are, more and 
more widely, found by others entirely unsatisfactory. 
The dispute now is no more as to doctrines, or as 
to miracles, but as to the existence of the supposed 
Being whose acts miracles would be, were the occur- 
rence of them established, — as to the existence, that is, 
of a supernatural, prayable-to God. Hence, it is be- 
coming more and more clear generally that all the 
doctrines of Christianity must be accepted, or its 
fundamental one cannot be maintained. Christians 
are, therefore, more and more ranging themselves 
under the two positive and uncompromising banners 
of Evangelicalism and Eomanism. And just, as 
Christianity is more and more throwing off compromise, 
Anti-Christianism is more and more getting out of the 
mere negative stage of ' Infidelity 3 into the positive 
one of Humanitarianism, and so presenting itself with a 
Weltanschauung \ a view of the World, of Life, and of 
History quite as positive as, and utterly antagonistic 

B B 



370 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



to, that given by Christianity. Such, I think, a com- 
petent observer, however he may regret, must admit 
to be no exaggerated statement of the facts of the con- 
temporary intellectual Eevolution. 

And now, as to the moral Eevolution. Intellec- 
tual theories have necessarily more or less of moral 
effects ; of effects, that is, on disposition, emotion, and 
aspiration. Among the moral effects of the Chris- 
tian theory of the Universe, and of Man's destiny, sub- 
missiveness to present misery in the hope of future 
blessedness must undoubtedly be reckoned as one of 
the most important. But see how great a revolution in 
the temper, with which the evils of life, under its pre- 
sent conditions, are borne, must necessarily result either 
from the weakening of belief in, or the ceasing of desire 
for, those rewards which have hitherto bribed to sub- 
mission. Various are the ways in which this new 
moral temper of the populations of Christendom shows 
itself. Without, however, even attempting here to dis- 
tinguish these ; I will but point-out that the ultimate 
basis of social institutions, and ultimate cause of sub- 
mission to constituted authority, is a certain moral 
disposition; and hence, that any considerable change in 
the moral temper of populations cannot but be of the 
most revolutionary significance. And that this is not 
only the 'fact ; but that, by the upper classes, and those 
interested in maintaining the present social order, it is 
more or less clearly seen to be the fact, is interestingly 
shown in their strong dislike to the dissemination of in- 
fidel opinions, even when entirely in accordance with 
their own private views; and in their obtrusive patronage 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 371 



of Christianity, even when their own private views are 
most distinctly anti-Christian. 1 

But, thirdly, as to the facts of the social Ee volution. 
Just as we found among the signs of the intellectual re- 
volution an increasing dissatisfaction with mere com- 
promises, we must, I think, also note among the chief 
signs of the social revolution an increasing dissatisfac- 
tion with mere ameliorations. Just as we found that 
questions as to theological doctrines have now but little 
interest except they have a direct bearing on the 
fundamental one of all, so we find it is with questions 
as to political forms that have not a direct bearing on 
the fundamental social institutions. And just as it ap- 
peared to be more and more clearly seen that the sys- 
tem of Christian doctrine has its reason and value only 
from the support it gives to the otherwise unmaintain- 
able, but fundamental, Christian dogma of an interfering 
personal God, so it now also appears to be more and more 
clearly seen that the mere forms of a Eepublic are 
worth neither strong contention for, nor against, except 
as such contention is regarded as a means of preventing, 
or of facilitating, the reorganisation of the fundamental 
social institutions. Hence, just as we found in noting 
the facts of the intellectual revolution, so, in noting the 

1 An illustration of this is, I think, to be found in the favour which 
the advertised occupants of platforms and Royal boxes have extended to 
such, persons as Messrs. Moody and Sankey, and in such partiality on the 
part of those newspaper-editors and writers, dependent on the upper 
classes, as has made it a rule to throw into the waste-paper-basket every 
communication relating to the 1'act, well known to most medical men, 
though the knowledge of it has been thus kept from the public — the fact 
of the great amount of mental derangement produced by the very skilfully- 
worked revivalism of these successful evangelists, or — adventurers. 

B B 2 



.372 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



facts of the social revolution, we find a tendency to the 
formation of extreme parti es- — parties more and more 
trenchantly divided in their principles and aims. And 
so also, just as we found that opposition to the Christian 
intellectual system has passed from the mere nega- 
tive stage of infidelity into the more or less posi- 
tive creed of Humanitarianism, so also we find that 
opposition to the Christian social system has passed 
from the mere negative stage of discontent into the 
more or less practical efforts of Socialism. Such, I 
think, every competent observer will admit to be the 
actual facts of our present social condition, revolution- 
ary facts, and facts that are in such parallelism as I have 
indicated with those of the contemporary intellectual 
revolution. 

Nor, as I would now endeavour, in the second 
place, to point-out, is the reason of such facts as have, 
in the foregoing three paragraphs, been noted, far to 
seek. Undoubtedly, if Eeligion means — as, in a large 
historical view of the phenomenon, it must, I think, be 
defined to mean — simply the emotion excited by the 
Causes of Things, however these are conceived — if this 
is what Eeligion means, then undoubtedly there is no 
antagonism between Science and Eeligion. But, if Ee- 
ligion means, as it is ordinarily limited to mean, the 
Christian Theory of the Causes of Things, and the emo- 
tion excited by that theory when unfeignedly believed 
then, no antagonism can be more utter than that be- 
tween Science and Eeligion thus defined. For, ac- 
cording to the Christian theory, the Causes of Things 
are the passions, emotions, and designs of an interfering,, 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD 01 ARMAGEDDON. 373 

supernatural, personal God ; and there results there- 
from a theory of the World, of Life, and of History 
which it is either the most dull stupidity, or the most 
dishonest prevarication, to deny to be in the most irre- 
concilable antagonism with that theory which is 
founded on the scientific conception of the Causes of 
Things. And hence, the reason of the facts above 
stated as indicative of an intellectual revolution is 
simply this — that, from the totality of our new know- 
ledge there arises a theory of the World, of Life, and 
of History utterly antagonistic to that presented by 
Christianity. 

And that a great change should be observable in 
the temper of the populations of Christendom will ap- 
pear sufficiently natural, if we but think of the facts of 
Human Misery that underlie all our fair-seeming civilisa- 
tion, and reflect on the very different views of the origin, 
and end of Human Misery given by the theory of His- 
tory based on the Scientific, and by that based on the 
Christian, conception of Causation. As to this Human 
Misery I will not here permit myself phrases that might 
be thought mere exaggerations. I will but recommend 
the comfortable and misery-uncrediting reader to get 
and reflect on the statistics of the numbers of paupers, 
criminals, and prostitutes, bearing in mind, with re- 
ference to the latter especially, that official returns give 
only the numbers of public and avowed prostitutes — a 
very small proportion of those who get, or eke-out, their 
miserable living by prostitution. Next let him obtain and 
consider the returns of bankruptcies and compositions 
with creditors; of trade-tricks and adulterations (for these 



374 



PIE GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



are generally but the effects and signs of the difficulty 
of making a living), and of strikes and lock-outs ; obtain 
also and consider the reports of the condition of the 
agricultural, mining, and artisan classes ; and obtain and 
consider the estimates formed by persons of experience 
as to the number of those of the middle and professional 
classes whose lives are the bitterest struggle to keep up 
appearances. Finally, let him get and reflect on the 
statistics of physical and mental disease, of un- 
timely death and suicide. And let whoever would, 
from such facts, endeavour to form a true conception of 
the amount of Human Misery under present social con- 
ditions remember that, little developed as yet as sym- 
pathy, friendship, and love may be, few are so friendless 
that their pauperism, crime, or prostitution, their bitter 
struggle for existence, their physical or moral disease, un- 
timely or suicidal death, does not bring misery to others 
than themselves. Such, then, as these statistics, reports, 
and estimates reveal, is the immensity of existing Human 
Misery ; and can it be wondered at that there is some- 
thing of a change in the temper with which it is borne, 
seeing that so widely discredited is now that Christian 
theory of its origin in forbidden Knowledge, and of its 
end in a gifted Angelic Heaven, of which the corollary 
is submission ; so widely credited that Scientific theory 
of its origin in necessitated Ignorance, and of its end in 
a reconstructed Human Society, of which the corollary 
is revolt? 

And if the reason of the contemporary facts of 
revolutionary intellectual antagonism is evident when 
we consider the utterly different character of the views 



Chaf. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON, 375 

that, according as men endeavour, or not, to bring their 
theories into accordance with the facts of our later 
knowledge, they take of the World, of Life, and of 
History ; no less evident will the reason be of the 
contemporary facts of revolutionary social antagonism, 
when we consider how intimately connected with each 
other are the forms of all the three great social institu- 
tions — Marriage, Property, and Government — and how 
fundamentally the first of these — the established Law 
of Sexual Eelations — is dependent on the Christian 
theory and ideal of Life. For if that theory and 
ideal is utterly discredited, then, the present form of 
that social institution, which is the basis of all, loses at 
once the authority and sanction which conformity with 
an accepted theory and ideal affords. Whether the 
substitution by Christianity of an indissoluble religious 
sacrament for a dissoluble civil contract is, or not, the 
best form that can possibly be given to the Law 
of Marriage, thus becomes a question to be tried simply 
by a comparison, and balancing, of the good and evil 
effects of such a law — among the latter of which will 
then especially be considered its apparently necessary 
concomitants of widespread adultery, seduction, and 
prostitution. It is not, however, necessary that a, man 
should be a jurist in order to see that any considerable 
change in the Lav/ of Sexual Eelations necessarily brings 
with it similar change in the Law of Industrial Eela- 
tions, and even also in the Law of State Eelations. 
And hence, opposed as a man may himself be to 
organic changes, it is mere uncandid folly not to 
acknowledge that the facts of human misery under 



376 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



existing social institutions, and the discrediting of that 
Christian theory and ideal, to the influence of which 
the present form of the most fundamental of these 
institutions is chiefly due, does give a reasonable justi- 
fication to those who think that any considerable lessen- 
ing of that misery is to be accomplished only through 
organic changes in the institutions under which it 
exists. 

Such, then, is the reason of those facts of revolu- 
tionary change and antagonism — intellectual, moral, and 
social — which neither the philosophic student nor the 
sagacious statesman will ignore, or treat as unreasonable. 
And I have now to point-out that the passions and 
aspirations by which this antagonism is distinguished, 
are such as to force to the conclusion that a peaceful 
termination of it is impossible. Let me, then, first 
venture to say that the Flag of the Eevolution, asso- 
ciated as it may in our minds be only with anarchy 
and blood, is to others the Flag of Justice dipt and 
dyed in the blood of the victims of ages of injustice. 
It is the Flag which — recalling to them the bloody 
intolerance and tyranny which, in proportion to the 
power of its priests and its kings, has distinguished the 
Social Order of Christianity — is the Flag of Avenging 
Memory — the Flag, devotion to which is the fulfilment 
of the sacred oath that the martyrs of Humanity, 
who have perished on the scaffold and at the stake, or 
worn-out chained lives in the dungeon and the mine ; 
or, when these last extremes were impossible, had, at 
least, all the joy taken out of their lives — shall not, 
shall not have suffered in vain. And both for those of 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 



377 



them who have, with micrushed souls, suffered injustice, 
and seen it to be, not an accident, but a necessity of the 
Christian Social System ; and for those of them who, 
if they have not themselves suffered, can sympathise 
with suffering, and burn against injustice from which 
themselves have been exempt — it is the Flag of Brother- 
hood with the Outcast. And deny this, malign, and 
belie, as will, of course, the ordinary partisan of the 
established Social Order, the clear-sighted student and 
statesman will assuredly not do so. For to them it will 
be evident that the force of enthusiastic self-devotion 
which that Flag is — deplore it as we may — capable of 
exciting will be altogether miscalculated, if one refuses 
to acknowledge what its best significance to thousands, 
nay, to millions now, unfortunately is. 

Nor, in considering the passions excited by contem- 
porary revolutionary antagonism, must we fancy that 
they are such as Charity, numberless as are its institu- 
tions, can assuage. Nothing, indeed, brings more home 
to one the irreconcileable character of this antagonism 
than just the different views that are on the two sides 
taken of the means to be used for the mitigation of 
human misery. By Charity, say those on the one side, 
this misery may be appreciably alleviated. By Justice, 
say those on the other, it maybe indefinitely diminished. 
Charity, they say, belongs to but the era of Miracle 
and Grace, the era of Christianity. For why Charity, 
but because of Disease and Pauperism ? Why Disease, 
but because Miracle is believed in, and Law unknown ? 
And why Pauperism, but because of ignorance in the 
organisation of Labour, and injustice in the distribution 



378 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



of Wealth ? Charity, then, they hold to be, in effect, 
but the bribe which keeps the diseased through ignor- 
ance, and the poor through injustice, quiet. Let Justice 
be done, they say, and then there will be no need of 
Charity. We have no thanks for its workhouses, and 
hospitals, its reformatories, its asylums, and almshouses. 
These to us represent but the means of assuring the con- 
tinuance of institutions shown to be unjust by these 
necessary palliatives of the misery that exists under 
them. And seeing that these views, however they may 
be qualified- — nor do I here state them as my own — 
are certainly expressions of what is felt by millions 
throughout Europe now, the forces of revolutionary 
passion under all our fair-seeming Civilisation cannot 
easily, I think, be overestimated. 

Undoubtedly, however, it needs two to make a 
quarrel. And, in the attempt of the philosophic stu- 
dent or foresighted statesman to judge whether the 
contemporary revolutionary antagonisms, intellectual, 
moral, and social, will probably, or can possibly, be 
peacefully terminated, it is of even more importance to 
consider the degree of passion that exists on the side of 
the defenders, than on that of the opponents, of the es- 
tablished Social Order. But alas ! if we have recently 
had some proof of the fierceness of passion on the Anti- 
Christian side, proof of an even more unscrupulous and 
remorseless passion on the Christian side we have also 
had. It might have been hoped that the spirit which 
prompted those atrocities of intolerance, of injustice, and 
of cruelty, with which every Christian Government in 
Europe has, for centuries past, attempted to suppress 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 379 

what lias, however, shown itself to be an unsuppressible 
Revolution, was a thing of the past. But in the atrocities 
of the repression of its latest outburst ; the miserable 
lies with which it was maligned, and every statesman- 
like concession refused ; the cold-blooded murders of 
prisoners ; and the furious massacres of surprised, sur- 
rounded, and unresisting battalions, not once, or even 
twice only during the late Second Siege of Paris ; the 
Reign of Terror, brief indeed, but bloodier than any 
on record since the Massacre of St. Bartholomew ; 
the Reign of Terror for which, in its fusillades of men, 
women, and even children, in batches of fifty, a hun- 
dred, or two hundred, Christians, however, found pre- 
cedents in the bloody chronicles of the Jews ; the 
Reign of Terror on the capture of Paris by the defen- 
ders of the established Social Order under the benedic- 
tion of the priests of Christianity — in these atrocities we 
have had but too lamentably strong proof that the spirit 
with which, since its establishment, Christianity has ever 
met serious attack on its institutions, is still unchanged. 
Neither philosophic student, therefore, nor foresighted 
statesman will delude himself with the hope that, such 
being still the savagery of men's passions, a fatal period 
of European conflict can be more than postponed 
only, and perhaps abbreviated. Nor, in the facts just 
referred to, will there be found an indication only of 
the certainty of such a conflict ; but, in the indication 
thus given of the awful depths of the abysses of hatred 
which, after nearly two thousand years of the presumed 
supernatural influence of Christianity, still exist in 
human souls — some indication will also, I think, be 



380 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



found at once of the powerlessness of its Ideal to re- 
generate Humanity, and of the need of a New Ideal. 

But during our long rest on the mound of El-Fuleh, 
looking out from the ruins of the Castle of the Crusaders 
on the prophetic battlefield of Armageddon, it was not 
only the facts that appeared to make certain a great and 
final revolutionary conflict, that I was led to recall and 
reflect on ; but the fact also that seemed to make it, at 
least, not improbable that the actual scene of this con- 
flict might be the vast battle-plain on which I looked. 
For, great as are the political questions appertaining to 
what may be distinguished as the home-sphere of 
Modern European Politics, these questions constitute but 
one-half of those with which the great statesman has 
now to deal. Not only have the relations of the State 
to the religion of Christianity to be readjusted, and the 
social institutions of Christianity to be re-moulded, or 
re-constructed ; but, in the solution of the so-called 
Eastern Question, the relations of Europe and Asia have 
to be definitively settled. And comprehending both 
sets of questions in the vast problem, the aim of the 
great statesman, so infinitely higher than that of a mere 
adjustment of temporary contrivances to temporary 
emergencies— the aim of the great statesman will be to 
make his moves in each set of questions contribute to 
the most desirable settlement of the other set. But, in- 
timately bound up—and especially, of course, for Britain 
and for Eussia, — as are these questions of Home 
with questions of Eastern policy, may not both sets of 
questions receive their final solution on the same battle- 
field, and that, this plain of Esdraelon ? 



Chat. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 381 



Certainly the probability of this appears not incon- 
siderable when we reflect, not merely on the geographi- 
cal and strategic relations of this vast plain, but on the 
fact — little noted as it is, or rather not hitherto noted 
at all, in reference to the solution of the great problems 
of European and Eastern politics — the fact of the exist- 
ence of revolutionary forces, similar to those of Europe, 
in every one of the great States of the East. JSTot only 
under the Western Civilisation of Christianity, but 
under the Oriental Civilisations of Confucianism, of 
Buddhism, of Brahminism, and of Islamism, there now 
exist forces destructive of supernatural beliefs and ex- 
clusive dogmas : and forces also tending to a social re- 
construction of which that aim which is the most uni- 
versal is likewise that which, in view of the present 
social institutions both of the East and of the West, must 
be regarded as second to no other in importance — the 
Enfranchisement of Women. Long, no doubt, it may 
yet be, and in England especially, before this great fact 
is duly recognised, and the Modern Eevolution seen in 
all its vast scope as a movement, not limited to Europe 
only, but co-extensive with Civilisation ; long it may yet 
be before the Party of Progress in every civilised state, 
not only of the West but of the East, take knowledge 
of each other, and aim at mutual assistance ; long it 
may yet be, and in England especially, before a states- 
man rises to the height of the grand argument, and 
aims at contributing, at least, to the combination, mutual 
strengthening, and guidance of all these superficially 
different, but fundamentally similar, movements. If, 
however, similar revolutionary forces exist, as they do 



382 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



exist, (though here I cannot enter on the proof of this 
affirmation), under every civilisation, not of the West 
only, but of the East ; then, certain, I think, we may 
say it is that, in these days of intimate intercommuni- 
cation, they will sooner or later find their advantage in 
combination ; and hence that, as I have said, those 
questions of religious and social reconstruction which 
more and more determine the Home policy of every 
civilised state, and these questions of the relations 
of Europe and Asia which more and more determine 
the Foreign policy of every civilised state, will have 
their final solution in the same revolutionary con- 
flict. 

Whether the scene of this conflict, or of any one im- 
portant battle in the course of it, will actually be this pro- 
phetic battlefield of Armageddon, is, of course, a matter 
of quite trivial importance. By no means, however, is 
it, I think, of trivial importance to point-out, as, in the 
foregoing pages, I have endeavoured to do, some of 
the natural grounds on which a final Battle of Arma- 
geddon must be calculated-on as unavoidable. Nor of 
trivial importance is it, I think, to point out that, 
wherever the actual scene of this battle may be, it will 
concern the East no less than the West, nor the West 
any less than the East. Progressively has the area of 
disturbance widened in each stage of the Modern Eevo- 
Tution. The Teutonic Eeformation was wider and more 
forceful in its wave-circles than the Italian Eenaissance. 
But more completely and powerfully European than the 
Teutonic Eeformation was the French Eevolution in 
the vast changes it effected. And, in the stage it has 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 383 

now entered, the Modern Revolution embraces in its 
vast scope all the civilised peoples of the world. 

But what will be the issue of this final revolutionary 
conflict ? Fulfilled we have seen good reason to believe 
will indeed be the apocalyptic prophecy of a Battle of 
Armageddon ; but fulfilled, it is to be feared, in such a 
way as, though keeping the word of promise to the ear, 
will tragically break it to the sense of those who most 
occupy themselves with the fantasies of the Seer of 
Patmos. And is there not, in the history of the plain 
of Megiddo and its battles, and in the falsehood of 
that prophecy of a 4 Second Coining ' which was to suc- 
ceed the immediately expected last battle of Arma- 
geddon, a warning of such tragic irony of prophetic 
fulfilment ? 

There have been five great historic battles of Arma- 
geddon. First, 1 that in which the founder of the Jewish 
Monarchy, after the rout of his army by the Philistines, 
slew himself on Gilboa. 2 The issue of the next great 
battle on the plain of Megiddo was the destruction of 
the Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrian Shalmeneser. 3 Of 
the third, the result was the death of the pious Josiah, 
and the destruction of the kingdom of Judah, by the 
Egyptian Pharaoh rTecho. 4 It was on the Mount of Be- 

1 For as great historic battles can hardly be regarded the onslaught 
in which ' the stars in their courses fought against Sisera ' (Judges vi. 20) ; 
and the massacre in which ' Yahveh set every man's sword against his 
fellow, even through all the host of the Midianites ' (Judges vii. 22). 

2 Samuel xxxi. 4. 

3 ' But glanced at in the prophetical (Hosea i. 5, and x. 14), without 
any notice of it in the historical books.' — Sinai and Palestine, 346. 

" 4 2 Kings xxiii. 22 ; 2 Chron. xxxv. 20, 22. 



384 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



atitudes itself that the King of Jerusalem, the Grand 
Master of the Templars, and the flower of Christian 
chivalry made their last stand in the fourth great battle 
of this plain, the fatal and unretrieved battle of Hatti, 
against the infidel Saracens and the victorious Salaclin. 1 
And the mount on which I now stood, among the ruins 
of the Castle of the Crusaders, was the central point of 
that battle of Mount of Tabor, 2 in which 3,000 French- 
men, sons of the Eevolution, withstood for six hours, 
and finally routed ten times their number. Kot, 
then, only before, but since the time of the Seer of 
Patmos, they who have triumphed in the historic 
battles of Armageddon have been the hosts of Evil — 
if, indeed, such are the enemies of Judaism and the 
forces of 4 Infidelity.' 

And yet the suggestion, in such historic precedent, - 
of a tragic irony of prophetic fulfilment is as nothing 
in its force when compared with the far more terrible 
suggestiveness of the fact of the utter falsehood of the 
original Armageddon-prophecy — the affirmation by 
the God of Christianity himself, and in the most 
solemn and unequivocal way, that that 6 generation 
should not pass away ' till 6 they should see the Son of 
Man coming in a cloud with power and great glory.' 3 
How possibly can the inference from this single fact 
alone be evaded, that the very basis of Christianism is 
falsehood and delusion? But now, let us leave the 

1 Bobinson ; Bill. Res. iii. 241-8. 

2 Fought in April 1799. Kleber commanded under Napoleon. The 
enemy had lo,000 cavalry, and as many infantry. 

3 Compare Mark xiil 20, 30, and 31, and Luke xxi. 27, 32, and 33. 



Chap. II. THE BATTLEFIELD OF ARMAGEDDON. 385 



Christian ruins of the Mound of El-Fuleh, and hoping, 
at Nazareth, for further light towards a reconstruction 
of the Ideal, let us remount, and continue our journey 
after these prolonged reflections on the Battlefield of 
Armageddon. 

Note. — In case of any of the foregoing passages, in which tne 
Christian Law of Marriage is alluded to, being misunderstood, let :me say- 
that it is by no means the institution of Monogamy itself, but the histori- 
cal Christian form of that institution, of which the expediency is ques- 
tioned ; that, in this, I am in accord with all the European legislation on 
marriage since the Reformation, and that I go no further in this direc- 
tion than Sir Henry Maine and Mr, Lecky in the passages quoted at 
page 283. 



C C 



386 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



CHAPTER III. 

TILE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 

Having crossed tlie Great Plain, and ascended the 
rocky Galilean Hills — their sides browsed by goats, and 
their recesses wooded— we followed a winding path in 
a rugged upland, and looked down, at length, on a little 
glen, but a mile long and a quarter of a mile broad, 
though with many narrow offshoots into the encom- 
passing hills. It was all one cornfield, about cactus- 
hedged gardens. Its elevated position and small size 
would, in the Scottish Highlands, probably have given 
it such a physically descriptive name as 6 Ardgleannan.' 
Let, then, those who are acquainted with places that 
have, or might have, such a name in Gaelic, plant the 
fig and the olive for the pine and the birch, and scent 
the rounded rocky summits with wild-thyme instead of 
heather, and they will have a pretty accurate physical 
conception of the glen of Nazareth (Nasirah). Clinging 
to the steep side of the northern hill, which overtops 
the others, and is crowned by a white- domed wely, is 
the large stone-built village ; in its lower quarter, 
a great pile of buildings within high-gated walls, 
and surmounted by a white tower, — the Convent and 
Church of the Annunciation. 

We rode up the hill-side past the Convent-gates, 



Chap. III. THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 



387 



before which is the chief open space of the town, and 
so, passed through, and down to where our tents were 
pitched at the foot of the hill, under the trees, on the 
green slope by the 'Fountain of the Virgin.' For this, 
according to the elder tradition of the Greeks, was the 
scene of the Annunciation, and here it was that Mary, 
while drawing water, received the salutation of the 
Angel Gabriel. 1 And the beauty of the virgins of the 
Fountain, the supple grace of their figures, and the 
Syrian languor and passion of their eyes, make such a 
local legend still appropriate. These daughters of men 
are still worthy the salutation of the sons of God. 

Soon after dismounting, I walked back alone to 
hear the afternoon service in the Latin Church. For Mr. 
Buckle was now too exhausted to move, and besides he 
disliked the noise of music. Passing through the outer 
court of the Convent, I entered the Church, rebuilt by 
the Franciscans in 1620, 2 over the grotto which, instead 
of the fountain, is, in the less poetical Latin tradition, 
made the scene of the Annunciation. Some paces before 
me, on entering, was a broad flight of steps leading 
down to this holy place, where, according to the inscrip- 
tion on the marble pavement, Verbum Caro factum est 
But the divine music that sounded through the Church ? 
and for which it is famous, took out of one's heart 
contempt — -justifiable as it might have been — of the 
Egyptian superstitions here enshrined. And amid 
these worshipping crowds of many nationalities, that 

1 Luke i. 26, 38. 

2 The first church at Nazareth was built by Tancred, after the 
capture of Jerusalem by the Crusaders in 1263 ; it was laid in ruins by 
Sultan Bibars, and leave was granted for its rebuilding by Fakr-od Deen. 

c c 2 



388 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



music brightened, as with heavenly light, the inspiring 
hope that the love of Christ, preacht, at length, in terms 
accordant with that conception of universal Law, which 
it was not given to Jesus to know, will break down the 
separating barriers of superstition, and bind mankind 
together as one. 

After the service I went up to the top of the hilL 
On my way through the village I believe I passed some 
other shrines of superstition, but I need not here name 
what I did not turn aside to see. For it was the 
summit of the hill that was most probably the true 
home of Jesus ; the most probable scene of those solitary 
meditations and entranced broodings that ever precede 
an historic mission ; the place of his most intense re- 
alisation of relationship with that ensphering Infinite, 
^ which he personified as his c Father ; ' in a word, his 
Prayer-home ; and there it is that we can most con- 
fidently realise that we also tread — 

Those holy fields, 
Over whose acres walked the blessed feet 
Which fourteen hundred years ago were nailed 
For our advantage to the bitter cross. 1 

And truly, if pilgrimages are made to the fountain- 
heads of mighty rivers ; and if, while there, in the 
grand solitude of the forest and the mountain, the scene, 
in the unity of its multitudinous associations, affects the 
most frivolous with some touch of solemnity; how 
much deeper must be the feeling, yea, almost to the 
verge of such oppression as precedes reaction, with 
which one will be affected in the solitude of the Hill 

1 Shakespeare, Henry IV. Part I. act i. sc. i. 



CnAr. III. 



THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 



389 



of Nazareth. Let Jesus be imagined a supernatural 
visitant of our Earth, and this hill, on which he alighted 
from the skies to be born from an unimpregnate 
womb, may indeed affect with a certain superstitious 
feeling. But how much deeper, and more truly edify- 
ing will one's feeling be. if one sees on this hill a 
fountain whose ultimate sources, indeed, are in the 
sphering Heavens, but that wells up from the depths 
of our common Earth ; a fountain whose ultimate 
sources, indeed, are in the sphering God, but that wells 
up from the depths of our common Humanity. 

Reaching the summit, a view is presented to us, as 
there was to him, the finest, perhaps, in the whole land. 
To the west is Carmel, its long ridge plunging abruptly 
into the splendour of the sea. Up from thence stretches 
the great plain of Jezreel or Megiddo ; Mount Gilboa 
and the fair Hills of Ephraim on its further side ; and 
beyond these, to the south, one knows are the bare and 
stony hills of Judaaa, and the barest and stoniest forms 
of Judaism. To the north, are the park-like wooded 
hills of Naphthali, and the lesser tribes of Zebulon and 
Asher ; with Sapphoris or Diocassarea, the traditional 
birthplace of the Virgin's parents, and Cana of Galilee ; 
and far away, Hermon, on the flanks of which is 
Cassarea Philippi, the furthest city of Galilee, the 
4 Circle ' or 6 Region ' 1 of the Gentiles. And eastward, 
between Little Hermon and Mount Tabor — like a breast 
of the Dmdymean Cybele, a full breast of the Earth- 
mother — is a glimpse of the Jordan valley, and of the 

1 Such is the meaning of Galil, or Galilah, from which Galilsea, 
Galilee, is derived. 



390 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



high, plains of Perasa, that, farther up, look across the 
deep-sunk Lake of Gennesareth to the second home of 
Jesus at Capernaum. 

On this summit, the first and holiest home of 
Jesus ; realising the very bodily presence almost of the 
Prophet of Nazareth ; yet, having but just come from 
the services of a Church consecrated to an incident of 
that Osirian mythology which, having gathered about the 
legends cf the life of Jesus, made of him Christ — a 
second Osiris or Grocl-man, coming on Earth for the 
good of mankind, falling a sacrifice to the Evil Prin- 
ciple, and rising again to become in a new life the 
Judge of the Dead — and having, during all the earlier 
part of the day, been crossing the apocalyptic battle- 
field of Armageddon, and the not improbable battle- 
field of the final conflict of the Eevolution; hardly 
could one's mind be but filled with a tumult of emo- 
tion that struggled in vain for the articulate expression 
of thought. But in the divine symbolism of the heavens 
were the words I needed. Eor over all the scene was 
the grandeur of thunder-clouds, illuminated by the last 
splendours of the Sun, as he sank in the Western Sea. 

Little I thought how often I should ascend and 
descend that path ; and what a daily Temple that 
mountain-summit would for a time become to me. 
But thus it came about. The threatened storm burst 
over us at midnight, and by morning our tents were 
flooded. Weakened as Mr. Buckle was by the previous 
day's illness, the wet and cold brought on a very severe 
attack of sore throat. Eemoving to the Convent guest- 
chambers, he was confined to his bed there for a week ; 



Chap. III. THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 



391 



and there I also took up my quarters, appropriating a 
room opposite his, and within hearing of his bell. Mr. 
Buckle was attended by one of the monks, a Spaniard, 
who acted as doctor to the brotherhood. But this 
Spanish leech got so determined to draw blood, not- 
withstanding my strong opposition, as being myself an 
old medical student, that, on Wednesday, I called in 
a Protestant Armenian, 1 who, I found, had just settled 
as a sort of missionary-doctor at Nazareth. Both 
gentlemen were kind and well-intentioned ; but the 
Armenian Proselyte was more tractable than the Spa- 
nish Friar ; and the result of the consultation of the 
Spaniard, Armenian, and Scot, was that there should, at 
least, be no bleeding. 

Not, however, only because of what I thought my 
duty to Mr. Buckle ; but also because of the fascination 
for me of Nazareth ; and the interest of the meditations 
which it suggested, I remained there all the time, nor 
made even the usual excursion to Carmel. Interesting 
its legends and the scenes 2 of them no doubt are ; and 

1 ; It is curious that among all sects of u Eastern Christians " the 
Armenians alone have furnished to Protestantism any considerable 
number of proselytes. This may be ascribed partly to their greater zeal 
for education .... partly to a certain innate seriousness of 
thought and character. Whether, however, the progress, such as it is, 
of Protestantism among them be a benefit may be doubted ; much might 
be said on either side.' — Palgrave, Essays on Eastern Questions, p. 192. 

2 The altar of the Convent-church is directly over the cave where 
Elijah is said to have hid himself from Jezebel. The grotto also of 
Elisha is shown near it. Near the base of the hill, on the north, is the 
( Cave of the Sons of the Prophets.' Some distance from it is a field 
still illustrative of the power of a curse of the ' Man of God.' The site 
of the contest of the prophets of Baal, and of Elijah, the prophet of 
Yahveh, appears to be indicated by the name el Muhrabah, the 
' Sacrifice,' and the Kishon still flows where the 850 defeated prophets 
were massacred. 



392 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt IV. 



that of the Sacrifice 1 lias unquestionably a certain savage 
grandeur. But it was enough to have Carmel in the 
horizon of my view, and its legends in the background 
of rny thoughts. 

For it was not Yahveh, the God of Elijah, and 
worthy rival of Baal, 2 whose character and origin I was 
at Nazareth interested to consider, but the character 
and origin of the God of Jesus. The critical study of 
the records of his mission had already resulted with me 
in the conclusion that, from narratives so meagre as that 
of Matthew, so fragmentary as that of Mark, so mytho- 
logical as that of Luke, so mystical as that of John, so 
late and unsupported by external evidence as them all, 3 
it was now probably impossible truly to reconstruct the 
life of Jesus. And though, since then, Eenan has, 
with admirable genius and learning, made the at- 
tempt, that conclusion does not seem to require 
any material modification. But little as, from the 
legendary and mythical accounts of it, we can, with 
anything like scientific assurance, ascertain of the 
character, the actual incidents of the life, and the de- 
velopment of Jesus, one fact, at least, is certain, 4 his 

1 1 Kings xviii. 17-46. 

2 Think, for instance, of Yahveh, in orthodox "belief the Creator of 
the illimitable Universe, being stirred with murderous fury because a 
certain handful of inhabitants of a little space of this Earthball said he 
' was God of the hills, but not God of the valleys ! ' — Kings xx. 28-30. 

3 See for an admirable digest of those results of the modern criti- 
cism of the Gospels, which I thus summarise, Supernatural Religion. 

4 It must, however ; I think, be admitted that, from the absence of all 
genuine contemporary, or even approximately contemporary records, of 
the life of Jesus, outside the circle of his disciples ; and from the 
legendary and mythical character of all the records of, and references 
to him ; a plausible case might be made-out in support of the hy- 
pothesis that no such person ever existed. It is only from our general 



Chap. III. THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 



393 



conception of God as a Father, and his preaching of 
Love. This was the one great word of all his utter- 
ances ; this, the most powerful element in the accom- 
plishment of that revolution which will be for ever as- 
sociated with his name. And the problem, therefore, 
which occupied my thoughts at Nazareth, and oppressed 
me, indeed, during all the time we were in Galilee, 
was, not the biographical one as to the life of Jesus, 
but the historical one as to the love of Jesus, and the • 
love for Christ. What was the origin of this vast new 
moral phenomenon — the new conception of God by 
Jesus, and the love for Jesus himself as the Anointed 
of God ? What was the cause of this new moral de- 
velopment, new development of Love ? And what, its 
connection with that similar new development which, 
in the Further East, five centuries before, found its ex- 
pression in Buddha and Buddhism ? 

Such were the questions, that, at length, arose with 
some clearness, one night, when I had not got to the 
hill-top till after sunset. And time passed quickly there 
under the stars. But in descending at last towards the 
Convent, I lost my way in the darkness, and found 
myself suddenly among some steeply-shelving rocks, not 
far, probably, from the true Bock of the Precipitation. 1 

knowledge of human nature and historical origins, that we can, I think, 
really assure ourselves that Christianity must have had, as its root 
and nucleus, a great moral genius and extraordinarily attractive per- 
sonality. But such a fact, however insufficient for biography, amply 
suffices for history. 

1 The monkish ' Mount of Precipitation ' is two miles from the 
village, overhanging the great plain j but Luke (iv. 29) says that ' they led 
him to a brow of the hill on which the city was built, so as to cast him 
down the cliff ; ' and this would certainly seem to indicate one of the 
many rocks overhanging, not the distant plain, but the village itself. 



394 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



My scrambling about here made such a noise in the 
still night, that it woke up all the dogs in the quarter of 
the town immediately below me. They advanced in a 
body to the attack of the enemy, all yelping in chorus, 
but, as it struck me, inharmoniously, in more senses than 
one. Yet how frequent is such irony as there was here : 
meditating on Love, and suddenly called upon, if not to 
hate, to fight ! For as the canine host was coming to 
close quarters, I found myself obliged to send a stone 
or two at the ribs of the leaders. This kept them at 
bay ; but by no means improved their martial music. 
And I had got on so steep a shelf of rock that I could, 
in the darkness, neither advance nor retreat with safety. 
At length some charitable Infidels came with lanterns 
to the rescue, and guided me to Ed-Deir (the Convent). 
There was, however, something that, even at the time, 
I relished in the adventure. For, though it was 
necessary to give an occasional halloo, and pitch an 
occasional stone, my senses were not wholly absorbed 
in the dog-clamour about me ; but I was still aware of 
the starlit Heavens, and of the sacred Earth ; and the 
scene had for me a typical significance. 

Only one other spot do I know sacred as Nazareth 
— that of Gotama Buddha's preparation for and entrance 
on his prophetic mission — though doubtless Mecca, and 
the mount which was the scene of the Great Arabian's 
early mental struggles and life-deciding visions, may 
also claim to be thus uniquely sacred. For sacred these 
places are in a far higher sense than are the scenes of 
the first brooclings even of a Shakespeare, or a Newton. 
At Nazareth, and at the one, or at most, two other places 



Chap. III. 



THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 



395 



on Earth to be named in the same breath with it, 
we may feel ourselves brought, not only into little 
less almost than personal contact with a great indi- 
viduality, but with the very spirit of a great new 
development of Humanity. But thus feeling the 
sacredness of Nazareth, it was, as I have said, a far 
larger question than, What was the character and de- 
velopment of the life of Jesus ? that occupied me ; it 
was the question, rather, What is the historical meaning 
of Christ and Christianity P or, in such terms as I have 
above used, What was the cause, and what were the re- 
lations of that new development of Love which found 
its Western expression in Christ and Christianity ? 

Duly, however, reflect on the problem stated in such 
questions, and it will be evident that its solution must 
be founded on, and derived from, that of the general 
problem of the relation of the Internal and the External 
— that general question of Idealism or Materialism 
which was at issue between Mr. Buckle and myself in 
all our discussions. For, if Buddhism and Christianity 
are rightly to be distinguished as vast new moral 
phenomena, and their origin explained from a general 
Law of History ; the question at once arises as to the 
nature and origin of moral phenomena ; of phenomena, 
that is, of passion, aspiration, and desire, or, in a word, 
of Want. This, more definitely stated, is the question, 
How is the Internal Element to be conceived ? as an 
externally-determined Passivity, as by Materialists ? or, 
as an undetermined Spontaneity, as by Idealists ? And 
hence, if it is clear that the distinctive conceptions of 
Idealists and Materialists give but a partial view of the 



396 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



truth ; clear it must also be that the solution of such a 
problem as that which presented itself to us here at 
Nazareth, What is the law of the origin of such moral 
phenomena as Buddhism and Christianity ? must be 
founded on the reconciliation of Idealism and Material- 
ism ; and hence, the solution of all the fundamental 
problems of Causation, and of Method. And it was 
into the consideration of these problems, therefore, that 
I found myself replunged at Nazareth. 

But if it is seen how irretrievably Science has under- 
mined all but the purely ethical beliefs of Christi- 
anity, and, indeed, of every supernatural religion what- 
ever ; if it is seen that, if there is j no Supernatural 
Eevelation, then, either Morality is but conventional 
custom, Eeligion but politically useful Superstition, or 
both one and the other are founded, not on a miraculous 
revelation of the will of God, but on a scientific revela- 
tion of the nature of Man ; if, in order to such a revela- 
tion, the immense importance is seen of a true explan- 
ation of the origin of such phenomena as Buddhism 
and Christianity ; if it is seen that Historical Method is 
the Novum Organon of such an explanation and re- 
velation ; and if it is seen that, both in order to the 
fashioning and the using of such an instrument, the 
profounclest problems of Metaphysics must be, in one 
way or another solved ; it will not be wondered at that the 
atmosphere of Nazareth gave but a new enthusiasm, 
and its associations but a consecrating aim to such 
abstract research. 

On the Monday-week after our arrival, and with 
that wonderful elasticity of recovery which characterizes 



Chaf. III. THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 



397 



temperaments like his, Mr. Buckle again mounted his 
horse, and crossing first one, and then another ridge, 
we descended a rocky slope, and rested for some time 
under a fig-tree above a fountain, with the so-called 
' Cana of Galilee,' 1 and its stone waterpots, the standing 
witnesses to the reality of 4 Our Lord's first miracle,' 
over against us on the height. 

Here, finding Mr. Buckle eager again for discussion, 
I told him of how I had been mentally occupied at 
Nazareth and of my chief result so far, with reference 
to the great problem, the solution of which had been 
my ultimate aim. Intellectually, the history of Man 
might, I said, be generalised as an advance from the 
conception of Spirits, or Gods, as the causes of things, 
to the conception of the Mutual Determination of 
Things themselves ; from the conception of Super- 
naturalism, or Miracle, to that of Naturalism or Law ; 
from the conception of Onesided Determination to the 
conception of Mutual Determination. But how has 
this advance been effected, and what is the relation 
thereto of Christianity ? Consider what is most essen- 
tial in Christianity as a great historical phenomenon. 
Is it not its moral character as expressive of a new 
development of Love? But Love may certainly be 
defined as the aspiration to, and feeling of Oneness, 
in the sense of Mutuality. Hence, however, it is at 
once brought into relation with Law. For if Law is the 
conception of Mutuality, Love is thus the instinct of 

1 Kefr Kenna. Ivana-el-Jelil, on the road from Nazareth to Acre, 
was up to, at least, the time of Sfewulf, in the fourteenth century, the 
traditional Cana, and it also had, of course, its waterpots. 



398 



PIL GRIM- MEMORIES. 



Paet IV. 



it. If, then, Christianity is, in its most essential as- 
pect, to be characterized as a new development of 
Love, of the aspiration to, and feeling of Oneness 
and Mutuality ; is not its place and meaning clear 
in the great historical development of Humanity ; is it 
not the moral foreboding of that intellectual conception 
of Law, or Mutual Determination, the clear discovery of 
which in its universality is the distinction of our modern 
historical Period ? Nor, I continued, in such a fact of 
the precedence of the intellectual conception of Mutu- 
ality, and of the full recognition of Law, by an intense 
moral aspiration to Mutuality, or new development of 
Love, would there be anything contrary to ordinary 
experience. It would be but a fact in the history of the 
intellectual conceptions of Humanity, analogous to that 
which we remark in the history of the intellectual con- 
ceptions of every individual Discoverer. 1 For great dis- 
coveries are always discoveries of Oneness. And the 
great discoverer is ever found to have had the persua- 
sion of that Oneness, to which he ultimately gives ar- 
ticulate expression, long before such expression becomes 
possible to him, and while, for his 6 persuasion, ' he is 
probably but jeered-at by the herd of self-styled e sen- 
sible ' people. Of course, the proof that the explana- 
tion of the origin and place of Christianity is to be 
found in a great Law of Human Development which 
shows a moral revolution to be the mid-stage in the 

1 The ( persuasion ' of Columbus that there existed a Western 
Indies is a typical instance. But compare also Faraday's ' long and 
constant persuasion that all the forces of Nature are mutually dependent, 
having one common origin, or rather, being different manifestations of 
one fundamental power.' — Experimental Researches, § 270-2. 



Chat. III. 



THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 



399 



history of the intellectual conceptions of Humanity, and 
shows, therefore, a moral revolution to have been the 
preparation for, and propaedeutic to higher intellectual 
conceptions, would be the most obvious disproof of Mr. 
Buckle's fundamental principle of the non-effect of 
Moral Forces as historical causes. None the less, how- 
ever, did Mr. Buckle, with the magnanimity which, in all 
intellectual matters, characterized him, urge me to follow 
up these views, as having, at length, brought all those 
philosophical theories, which I had been maintaining in 
discussion with him during these past months, to the 
test of the verification, or otherwise, of a definite his- 
torical hypothesis. 

Soon after, we rose, mounted, and rode on our way ; 
stopped again for lunch under another fig-tree ; re- 
mounted, and rode on again over undulating, and fertile, 
but neglected plains ; catch a glimpse, at length, of the 
Holy Lake, 1,000 feet below us ; and, descending the 
long steep slope in the eventide, we encamp on the 
margin of the rippling waves, all aglow in the splendour 
of a sunset that encrimsonecl also the far snows of 
Mount Her m on. 

The Sea of Galilee and its shores — like what might 
be those of the crater of a volcano — have now but two 
characteristics of the days of Jesus ; an atmosphere, 
close, suffocating, and enervating ; and (this probably, 
at least,) a population remarkable as 6 smaller, darker, 
and more effeminate-looking than those who breathe 
the more bracing air of the high plains and the moun- 
tains.' And it was these enervating and effeminately- 
peopled shores where chiefly originated those fictions 



400 



RIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



in which the great moral movement of Christianity 
clothed itself — these shores that were the hotbed of 
the Christ-legends, as distinguished from the Christ- 
myth. Of this, it was suggested, in Egypt, that the 
origin is to be found in that atmosphere of Osirian- 
ism, that atmosphere of myths of God-men coming 
on Earth for the good of mankind, suffering death, 
and rising from the dead to be Judges in the Future 
State, that atmosphere of moral solar myths in which 
the narratives of the life of Jesus were composed. 
But what was the origin of the Christ-legends — the 
stories of such ' mighty works ' as the feeding of 5,000 
men, besides women and children, on five loaves and 
two fishes, from which were left twelve baskets of frag- 
ments ; the casting out of devils, and 6 suffering ' them, 
without a thought of the injustice of such permission, 
to enter into swine, which thereupon 'ran violently 
down a steep place into the lake, and were choked,' to 
the great damage of their owner ; the healing of all 
manner of diseases by a touch, — so that the blind re- 
ceived their sight, the lame walked, the lepers were 
cleansed, and the deaf heard — and the raising even from 
the dead by a word ; miraculous draughts of fish, and 
the obtaining from the mouth of one remarkable trout 
the very sum, in current coin, required by the tax- 
gatherer ; calming the sea by a word which winds and 
waves obeyed, and walking on its waters even as 
on land ? Here it was that these legends originated, — 
here, in this volcanic atmosphere, and among such an 
ignorant and effeminate population as this. 

But evenhere, these 'mighty works' were, by the towns- 



Chaf. III. 



THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 



401 



people of Chorazin, Betlisaida, and Capernaum, believed 
to be mere fictions, and cursed these less credulous towns 
were accordingly ; while, on returning to Nazareth, and 
presenting himself as a prophet foretold by Isaiah, yet 
evading the very natural demand, ' Whatsoever we have 
heard done in Capernaum, do also here in this country,' 
this miracle-working Christ was at once driven out of the 
village as an impostor, and very narrowly escaped with 
his life. And it is further naively acknowledged that, just 
where there was the unbelief requiring 4 mighty works ' 
to shake and change it, there, 4 no mighty works were 
done because of their unbelief.' Can, then, any rational 
man or woman — save, indeed, the exercise of reason 
has been wholly abandoned, and there is readiness to 
accept the grossest of modern Spiritist marvels, or 
Eomanist miracles, which also require as a condition of 
their performance no sceptical inquiry into their reality 
— can any rational man or woman who reflects that 
these Galilean stories of the ' mighty works ' of Jesus 
did, as a matter of unquestionable fact, originate among 
an ignorant and effeminate multitude, led by peasants 
and fishermen ; can any rational man or woman, thus 
reflecting, but agree in unbelief with the contemporary 
townsfolk of Chorazin, Bethsaida, and Capernaum, 
and attribute to these ' mighty works ' such an origin 
only as is to be found in the imaginative exaggera- 
tion and enthusiastic credulity of such a multitude, 
so led ? Sacred, therefore, as I found Nazareth, the 
birthplace of Jesus, I found no sacredness in Genesareth^ 
the birthplace of Christ. And as, — necessary incidents 
though they may hitherto have been in human de- 

D D 



402 PILGRIM-MEMORIES. Past IV. 

velopment, — fictions are ever desolating in their effects ; 
most fit and symbolically significant seemed to me the 
desolation now of that hotbed of fiction, the once ex- 
uberantly fruitful and densely-peopled Paradise of 
Galilee : — most fit and symbolically significant, the un- 
traversed solitude now of its sea, unpeopled silence of 
its shores, and thistle-hid ruin of its villages. 

Mr. Buckle seemed chiefly interested in Tiberias, 
and the wretched Jewish moiety of its population of 
some 2,000. For, in Hebrew belief, the Messiah will 
/ rise from the waters of the Lake, land at this village, 
and establish his throne at Safed ; hence, since the de- 
struction of Jerusalem by the Eomans, Tiberias has been 
the principal seat of the Jews in Palestine ; and it was 
the residence of the chief Talmudists, the compilers of 
the Mishna, Gemara, and Massorah. Eemarkable it 
is thus to find the shores of the Sea of Galilee at once 
the hotbed of the Christ-legends, and the home of such 
compilers of fictitious lore as the Talmudists. 

But riding away, at length, both from the town with 
its Jewish, and the beach with its Christian associations, 
and over an upland plain certainly often traversed by 
Jesus, I expressed relief at leaving behind that atmo- 
sphere of legend and of myth which had seemed almost 
entirely to obscure even those great general features of 
high idealism and moral elevation which, at Nazareth, 
I thought that I had seen something like clear evidence 
for attributing to its Prophet, driven-out though he not 
inexcusably was, when he returned with the fame, but 
without the power, of a miracle- worker. But, to the * 
enthusiasm with which I spoke of how Jesus had ap- 



Chap. III. 



THE BIRTHPLACE OF JESUS. 



403 



pearecl to me at Nazareth, Mr. Buckle objected in strong 
terms the incident of his having turned to his mother, 
when she spoke to him at the Wedding, and said, 
4 Woman, what have I to do with thee ? ' and, still worse, 
his having, on another occasion, apparently disowned 
her and his whole family altogether. In this, however, 
I could see nothing but an effect of that high idealism 
which I believed to have been the basis of the character 
of Jesus ; a sign of 4 das Leben in der Idee ; ' an evidence 
of that high-strung mental state which counts all as 
nothing in comparison with the idea — a state which 
would appear to be the necessary condition of all heroic 
achievement. I admitted the anti-social qualities, in 
some respects, of this heroic ' Leben in der Idee.' 
But where would the world be without it ? And it 
seemed to me that whether even Napoleonic indifference 
to the destruction of 4 quelques centaines d'hommes ' 
was really very blameable, or not, depended on the 
selfishness or selflessness of the 4 Idee.' For if the 
■ Idee ' were false, that was less the fault of the man 
than of his time. And if the heroic enthusiasm of the 
4 Leben in der Idee ' has hitherto been often most mis- 
chievous, better might be hoped of the future in which 
more enlarged knowledge shall have purified the beliefs 
capable of arousing enthusiasm. But presently, as we 
were ascending a rocky ridge, and riding in single file, 
I heard a cry, and, looking behind, saw Mr. Buckle, 
(who had by no means yet recovered from the weakness 
left by his recent illness,) falling from his horse. I leapt 
instantly off my own, but found that Mr. Buckle had 
happily sustained no considerable injury. 



404 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part IV. 



There was little talk during the rest of our journey. 
But, sitting again after dinner, before the tent, by the 
Fountain of the Virgin, Mr. Buckle congratulated himself 
on feeling decidedly better and stronger than when he 
had left. As we sat, the maidens of Nazareth were 
passing to and fro with their gracefully balanced 
pitchers — girls with faces for a Eaphael, and figures for 
a Phidias. I chanced to say 6 they were shamefully 
pretty.' This Mr. Buckle immediately capped with 
Moliere's humourous 4 Fi done, n'as tu pas Jionte d'etre 
si belle ? ' And, as the maidens of Nazareth have, from 
of old, had rather a distinguished reputation for frailty 
as well as beauty ; remark could hardly but arise on 
the possible secrets which that Virgin of the Fountain, 
who has had a destiny so wonderful, ' kept in her 
heart;' and then thought, which there were scarce 
words to utter, on the ineffable mockery, so often, of 
human beliefs by the actual facts respecting the objects 
bedizened with these beliefs. No Eomance and Tragedy 
in Human Life ! Why, it is only now, — in the de- 
struction of the puerile Jewish, and Judaso-Christian 
Philosophy of History, and in the truer and larger views 
that the New Philosophy of History even already gives 
of the process of Human Development, — only now that 
we are beginning to feel and know something of what 
Eomance and Tragedy really mean. Nor — of the sub- 
limity of the Eomance, the Comedy also, and the 
Tragedy, that are the three great mutually-completing 
aspects of Human Life — is there any place more sug- 
gestive than the Birthplace of Jesus. 



PAET V. 
LEBANON. 



407 



CHAPTEE I 

THE MISTRESS OF TEE SEAS. 

Leaving Nazareth on Wednesday, May 7 th, we entered 
on a new, and what, alas, was to be for Mr. Buckle 
the last division of our Eastern Journey. The grand 
valleys of Lebanon were now before us : the sea-plain 
of Phoenicia along the western base of Lebanon, the 
Mid-Lebanon hollow of Caslesyria, and the desert- 
plain of Damascus on the eastern side of Anti-Lebanon. 
Our first day's journey was down to the sea at Akka — 
the ' Key of Palestine,' as it was called by Napoleon — St. 
Jean d'Acre. After crossing the hills that shut in 
Nazareth, we came to a wide, green plain ; and presently 
we passed the great fountain, the gathering-place of the 
Crusaders before the Mediaeval battle of Armageddon, 
the fatal and unretrieved battle of Hattin ; and about 
a mile further on, Sepphoris, Diocsesarea, or Sefurieh, 
with its Mohammedan village, Eoman ruins, and 
Christian traditions. For here, after indeed the usual 
period of womb -life, but, as has been authoritatively 
settled, 1 an £ immaculate conception,' '* Our Lady ' was 
born, the Goddess of Christendom, and 4 Mother of 
God.' 

1 December 8, 18o4 : a date which the Anglican Bishop of Win- 
chester, at the Church Congress of 1874, has just declared to be 'the 
most important since the Council of Trent ! ' 



408 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



But as we rode along the rich and beautiful plain, I 
beheld what our guide-book had not prepared us to see 
— a great sheet of water overhung by wooded banks re- 
flected in its silver mirror. It was a landscape never to 
be forgotten. But it was mirage. It was the first time in 
our whole journey that we had seen this singular phe- 
nomenon, and it was the last. Nor could it but appear 
to me as strangely opportune, then and there. For, 
riding away from Nazareth, and leaving the Holy Land 
of the Jew and the Christian for the Syrian plains of 
Lebanon with associations so different, and, in great 
part, so antagonistic, what could be one's morning 
thoughts, after such experiences as those of the past 
weeks in Palestine — what, but that utterly unsubstan- 
tial, utterly of the nature of mirage, utterly unreal, 
was the whole world seen by Christians on the real 
world ? For we had come too close to it. And just as 
here, this fair lake with over-hanging woods vanished 
on riding a little nearer ; so, on coming closer to it, had 
the over- world of Christian belief vanished as 'the 
baseless fabric of a vision.' But it was no sterile, 
waterless, and sandy desert that greeted our view when 
this mirage of Sepphoris broke ; but, on the contrary, 
a glorious fountained park-like plain, all the fairer for 
the clearing-off from its reality of the shimmering decep- 
tion that, for a time, had beguiled us. Nor other- 
wise now appeared to me the world itself, though the 
over-world mirage of Christian belief had similarly 
broken, and cleared from off it. For a glimpse, at 
least, seemed, at Nazareth, to have been got of the law 
of the origin of this mirage of Christianity, and of its 



Chap. I. THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 



409 



place, therefore, meaning, and service in the development 
of Humanity. 

Only, however, thus briefly can I here indicate the 
rushing thoughts of an irrepressible gallop over this 
glorious park-like plain. But in order to further clearness 
with reference to that hypothesis which, having first sug- 
gested itself at Nazareth, had given rise to these 
thoughts — the hypothesis, in the establishment of which, 
as it seemed to me, not only would both the primitive 
origin, and the present transformation of Christianity be 
explained, but a great general Law of Human Develop- 
ment made manifest — in order to further clearness with 
reference to this hypothesis, the first thing to be done 
evidently was to see finally whether there was any, and 
what truth in Mr. Buckle's so-much-insisted-on doctrine 
of the non- effect of Moral Forces as historical causes. 
So, pulling up, and finding him ready, as usual, for a 
speculative combat, we had one more and final bout on 
the subject. 

This was our last important discussion. And — riding 
as we had latterly been through the magnificently rich 
pastoral and agricultural plain of Akka — it terminated 
as we approached the famous fortress-town, the Sea- 
gate of Syria, and watered our horses at a fountain. 
Soon after, we passed through the gates, and rode along 
streets that occupy the site of those of the Phoenician 
Accho, and Greek Ptolemais; of what was once the chief- 
place of the Mediaeval kingdom of Jerusalem ; the 
head-quarters of the Knights of the Temple, the Teutonic 
Knights, and the Knights of St. John, (from whom the 
town has its modern name of St. Jean d'Acre) ; the 



410 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



general gathering- place of the Crusaders ; and the seat 
of those Congresses in which all the princes of Europe 
met, when these now-silent shores 'resounded,' as again 
they may, 'with the world's debate.' 1 First of all, 
however, the constant riding of the past week made it 
necessary to seek out a tailor for certain repairs. After- 
wards, rejoining Mr. Buckle at a cafe, the consul called 
on us, and we set-out, under his guidance, to make 
the round of the fortifications. 

Lingering behind, I chanced to look down a grating. 
It was a vast dark space into which I looked, between 
outer and inner walls, beneath a bomb-proof roof, and 
lighted but by the rays that shot through the iron bars 
by which I stood, down into the obscure depths. In 
these depths the light-rays fell on wretches chained 
two and two, hand and foot. As I afterwards found, 
there were 200 in this dungeon. 4 Les Miserables ! ' 
Catching sight of a fellow-creature looldng down on 
their hell from the heaven outside, a number of them 
came limping forward, turning-up to the light their 
miserable felon-faces, begging for something to be 
thrown them. All, — it was but little — I chanced to 
have in my pockets, went. And there was a pitiable 
scramble. Never, I trust, — nor do I think that ever — 
shall I forget the sight of this dungeon. Let the reader 
but consider the circumstances that had prepared me 
to see more here than the prison only of the Pashalic 
of Akka. The clay had begun with the sight of a 
mirage that seemed with the most vivid truth to typify 
and symbolize the world of Christian belief — nay, all 

1 Gibbon, Decline and Fall, vol. vii., close of chapter on 1 Crusades/ 



Chap. I. 



THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 



411 



the worlds, more or less, of established religious belief. It 
had been spent in discussions, of which the aim — of a 
far more practical character than the satisfaction of 
mere speculative curiosity — had been a reconstruction 
of the Ideal more in accordance with the facts of 
the Universe, than the Christian Ideal. And the 
day was now closing amid associations which were 
all historical proofs of the social misery that is ever, 
at once, the consequence of false faith, and the highest 
motive for its destruction. It was not, therefore, the 
prison only of the Pashalic of Akka that I here saw ; 
but a picture, a living symbol of a far wider fact of 
dungeoned misery. Happiness, perhaps, of a kind, 
is the existing Social Order for the few ; but for the most 
— dare we but say it, — it is pauperism, crime, and pro- 
stitution, or a desperate struggle for existence on the 
brink of these. 1 

Mr. Buckle next day was ill again. Encamped 
on the fine glacis of the fortress, with a refreshing 
breeze from the historic bay that had once been filled 
with the fleets of the Pisans, the Genoese, and the 
Venetians ; with Carmel, the Mount of Beatitudes, and 
the Galilean hills bounding our landward view ; and 
with, for the mind, all the associations of a place that 
has been the one city of Palestine directly connected 
with the Christian, (as Cassarea, the Eoman provincial 
capital, in the plain of Sharon, on the other side of 
Carmel, was with the Classic,) world of the West, I 
should gladly have consented to our tents remaining 
for one day unstruck. But again Mr. Buckle would 

1 See the statistics, &c, referred to above, p. 373-4. 



412 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Past V. 



on. Had I guessed it probable that our previous day's 
discussion would be, as it was, our last ; — for after this 
I find noted but one or two conversations, or rather 
monologues, with reference to himself — I should more 
strongly have urged the necessity of a day's rest ; though 
I doubt very much if I should have done so with success. 
As it was, we mounted and continued our journey. 

For the first three or four hours we rode along 
the sea- margin of the magnificent plain, by fields 
with the richest crops, waysides that were gardens 
of flowers, and orange-groves enchanting with per- 
fumes. Then, by a steep zigzag path, like a ruined 
staircase, we had to climb the bluff promontory which, 
dipping into the sea, and with no beach at its base, like 
Carmel, terminates the plain of Akka, and, forming the 
southern pass into Phoenicia proper, was known of old 
by the appropriate name of the 6 Tyrian Ladder.' 1 
With difficulty it was scaled by Mr. Buckle. Dis- 
mounted, and leaning on my arm, he stumbled on, but 
so painfully that at last he fell altogether. On the 
summit we looked, on one side, on the gleaming Bay of 
Acre ; and, on the other,on the Phoenician land-strip, with 
Tyre in the distance. We got at last on the level again. 
But we had still a ride of considerably more than two 
hours to our camping-place for the night, £ Alexander's 
Fountain,' a copious mossy and ferny spring on the 
land side of the massive ruins of a large fort, almost 
overhanging the sea — Mutatio Alexandroschene — 
' Alexander's Tent.' I had my second bathe on the 

1 Probably both this promontory and the White Cape further north, 
were included under the name of Scdla Tyi iorum. 



Chap. I. THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 



413 



Phoenician Coast ; my first had been yesterday. And 
then in the evening, after dinner, — Mr. Buckle being 
able for talk of no kind — I sat smoking and thinking 
alone at my own tent-door, looking towards the glo- 
rious red-and-golden sunset. 

When Alexander, with his victorious Macedonians, 
encamped near, or, at any rate, had water drawn from this 
spring, and passed here, he had come from the destruc- 
tion of Tyre — and if it had withstood him seven months, 
it had been besieged for five years, in vain, by Shal- 
maneser, and for thirteen by Nebuchadnezzar — and he 
was on his way to Egypt, now a Persian satrapy, to be 
rather hailed as a deliverer, than submitted to as a 
conqueror, and to found Alexandria. The ancient 
civilisations of Assyria and of Egypt, the greatest 
of the states of the First Age of Humanity, had been 
broken-up for ever by the conquests of Cyrus, and 
his son Cannyvses, (Kai Khusru, 558, and Lohrasp, 
527 B.C.) ; and similar, it may be added, had been 
the effect, on the ancient civilisations of China and of 
India, of the contemporary moral conquests of Con - 
fucius and of Gotama-Buddha. Alexander was the 
successor of Cyrus, and, by about a like period, the 
predecessor of Cassar in that vast humanitarian Eevo- 
lution thus initiated, and of which all three were the 
Empire -commissioned agents. In order, therefore, to 
a true judgment of Alexander, he must be considered, 
not only in the individual relation of his character to 
that of Cyrus and of Cassar, but in the historical rela- 
tion of his work to theirs. The preparation of the 
political and social conditions which made Christianity 



414 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



possible was the great outcome of the work of all 
three. But Alexander did more than thus generally 
prepare the conditions of the development of Chris- 
tianity. It was the extension of his conquests to India 
that opened the West to those Buddhist missionaries 
who should seem to have exercised no inconsiderable 
influence on the beginning of Christianity. The form 
also of that New Religion which, from the disintegration 
already in his own time of the ancient Pagan faiths, 
was certain to arise, he indirectly, at least, deter- 
mined, by founding Alexandria, and making Egypt — - 
what, even under the Prefectus Augustalis of the 
Roman Empire, it intellectually remained — a Greek 
kingdom. For hence arose the influence, on the nas- 
cent Judseo-Greek religion, of Neo-Platonic theosophy 
and Osirian mythology. But the career of Alexander 
has for us an even more immediate interest than that 
given by such considerations as these. The Revolution, 
in the midst of which we now are, will certainly be the 
destruction of that Creed, the rise of which his con- 
quests prepared, and of which they determined the form. 
Nor will it, less certainly, in that vast movement again of 
the West on the East which distinguishes our time, re- 
sult in a new, truer, and more universal synthesis — a 
New Faith and a New Polity. Let the thought, then, of 
him who once drank at this spring, and whose body, 
but a few years after, was carried from Babylon, the 
capital of his World-empire, to Alexandria for sepul- 
ture — let the thought of Alexander, prophet as well as 
king, as Leo Africanus well calls him, inspire us with 
some touch at least of his sublime passion for Oneness 



Chap. I. THE MISTEESS OF THE SEAS. 



415 



and clearness and boldness, both of destruction and 
reconstruction. 

We had scaled but one of the ladders, and sur- 
mounted but one of the promontories that bar southern 
invasion of the Phoenician plain. So we had, next 
morning, to climb the other ladder, the white chalky 
ridge of Pliny's Promontorium Album. The narrow, 
winding, rock-hewn path, here and there cut into steps, 
now almost worn-down, sometimes approached the very 
edge of the precipice, and grand was the dashing of 
the waves far below. Descending at last into Phoenicia 
proper, on the left was the sea ; on the right, the hill 
village of the Metawileh ; and high over these, in the 
far distance, White Lebanon. In about an hour and a 
half we came to the hamlet of Bas-el-Ain (Fountain- 
head), and here stopped for some time. For the place is 
remarkable for great fountains and grand reservoirs, 
which probably mark the site of Palcetyrus, 4 Old Tyre.' 
Here Alexander had been ; and here also it was, 
according to Mediaeval tradition, that Jesus encoun- 
tered the importunate Syrophoenician woman. 

Alexander, then, and Jesus had both been here ; both 
— though we can, with perhaps more clear historic 
evidence, affirm this of the first than of the second — 
both men of godlike genius, though so different 
are the peaks they occupy. Alexander and Jesus 
both had been here, and each had, not unwarrantably, 
claimed to be Son of the Supreme God. Suppose the 
three centuries that separated them to have vanished, 
and that they, Alexander and Jesus, had been here 
together, and that you, reader, had been present at the 



416 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



interview. What would they have thought of each 
other ? And to which of them would you have bowed 
as the more complete man? To Jesus, with his Semitic 
onesidedness, and unquestionable ignorance and narrow- 
ness, however sublime a mystic you may imagine 
him ; or — suppose him such as some maintain — to 
Alexander, with his Aryan manysided completeness 
— the enthusiast of Homer ; the pupil of Aristotle ; 
the general no less cautiously attentive to detail than 
brilliantly audacious in plan ; the statesman with 
schemes of world-union, wholly unfettered by pre- 
judices either of nation or of race ; and the man of 
heroic valour and magnanimity ? Brought to such a 
test as this, that 4 Imitation of Christ,' of which there 
is so much canting talk, is seen to be, at once, both im- 
possible and undesirable as the imitation of a life. 
Possible and desirable it undoubtedly is as the imitation 
of a certain tone, c method,' and sentiment. 1 But this 
would be for the sake of one only of the elements of 
our complex modern ideal of a great life. For, ques- 
tionable as may be the truth of the above as a por- 
trait of Alexander, it is certainly in closer accordance 
with the modern ideal of a great life, than was the 
probable reality of the life of Jesus. 

Eemounting — for we were still about three miles 
from the modern town, and island-nucleus of the 
ancient ' Mistress of the Seas ' — rushing thought urged 

1 And yet, as the passages expressive of this ' tone, method, and senti- 
ment ' are almost all to be found only in the so-called Gospel o f St. John, 
it would, considering its certainly late date, and other circumstances, 
perhaps be more accurate to distinguish this truly divine tone, method, 
and sentiment, not as that of Christ, but of the great yet nameless 
Ephesian, the probable author of that work. 



Chap. I. 



THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 



417 



into the rushing motion of a glorious gallop along the 
sands. Thus galloping, and delightedly joined by the 
boys, I passed an evidently English party, riding from 
the direction of Tyre. Turning round, I observed 
Mr. Buckle speaking to one of them. I rode back, 
and found he was the Hon. Colonel Bruce, and 
that we had just passed the Prince of Wales. To 
Colonel Bruce, when Secretary for Indian Affairs 
during his brother Lord Elgin's Governor-General- 
ship of Canada, I had been indebted for introductions 
to Indian chiefs that had given me, in the Far West, 
some of the most adventurous months of my life. New 
thoughts were thus added to those already here sug- 
gested. For, on these Tyrian sands of the earliest of the 
civilisations of the Past, there were thus recalled to me 
the still savage-frequented forests, lakes, and prairies of a 
civilisation yet in the Future. Eiding on, I turned round 
again, and lo, Hassan, trying to overtake us, but some- 
how unseated, slides suddenly over his horse's tail and 
measures his length on the sands ! The horse, much re- 
lieved, and apparently also amused, stopped and neighed 
at his prostrate master. And from the tension of mind 
caused by all those visions of the Past and of the 
Future, to which the historic atmosphere of these sands 
gave rise, one had a fine relief in a hearty laugh. 

Coining at length to the low sandy isthmus — the 
remains of the causeway by which Alexander connected 
the original rock 1 of Tyre with the mainland, and so 
stormed the walls, just as, afterwards he connected 

1 Such is the meaning of the Hebrew Tsur, Chaldee Tur, and 
Arabic Sur, whence the Greek Syria. 

E £ 



418 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



the island of Pharos with the mainland, and so founded 
Alexandria — we rode along it, and entered the gate of 
the modern half-Christian half-Metawileh town. This 
covers but the northern part of the island-rock, three- 
quarters of a mile long, by half a mile broad, and 
about half a mile distant from the coast-line. Tyre 
has, however, still a bazaar, and about sixty vessels in 
its port. But there are no standing monuments of 
antiquity, save certain fragments of the walls of its 
ancient Cathedral. With these walls, however, are as- 
sociated a remarkable number of historical memories. 
The church, of which they are the fragments, was built 
by Paulinus, Bishop of Tyre, in the fourth century, and 
had its still-extant 1 consecration-sermon preached by 
Eusebius. It was the Catheclral-church of William, 
Archbishop of Tyre, the historian of the Crusades ; 
and within its sanctuary were the tombs of Origen 
(d. 254) and of the Emperor Frederic Barbarossa 
(d. 1190). 

But these walls have a still higher interest than 
that given even by such historical memories as these. 
They are standing witnesses of the nonfulfilment and 
untruth of the Hebrew prophecies. ' What ! ' the 
Christian reader may exclaim, 6 have not the pro- 
phetic judgments on Tyre not only been marvellously 
fulfilled, but is not this marvellous fulfilment 0De of 
the most convincing of the evidences of prophecy to the 
truth of the Christian Eevelation ? ' Well, nurtured in 
all this as I had myself been, it was certainly with 
peculiar feelings that I found myself in the thronged 

1 Euseb. Hist. Eccl. x. 4. 



CHAr. I. THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 419 

Bazaar of Tyre ; and that, though I had long known 
that the elements of the argument from Prophecy were 
but half truths and whole fictions. 1 Nothing, certainly, 
of its ancient splendour, and but a tenth of its former 
population, has this third Tyre. But these walls, the 
ruins of the church of Paulinus, remind us that for 
more than a thousand years there was a second Tyre, 
one of the most splendid cities of the East, and trading 
with all the world. Yet of the first Tyre, the Lord 
God, according to Ezekiel, had again and again both 
said and sworn that it would not only be destroyed, 
but 'built no more.' And the fine irony of History 
we cannot but again remark in finding that it is Chris- 
tians — St. Jerome in the fourth, and William of Tyre 
in the thirteenth century — who are our chief wit- 
nesses to the splendour of the rebuilt Tyre. Nor can 
it be truly pretended that the destruction of Tyre by 
Alexander was even a partial fulfilment of the prophe- 
cies against it. For, as the motive of the destruction 
of Tyre was, 6 because Tyrus had said against Jerusalem, 
Aha,' 2 the purpose of its destruction was that ' there 
should be no more a pricking brier unto the house of 
Israel, nor any grieving thorn of all that are round 
about that despise them.' 3 And when Tyre was tem- 
porarily destroyed by Alexander, its destruction or 
non-destruction had long ceased to be of any national 
consequence to the poor Jews, who had already lost 

1 But greatly as my views Lave come to differ from his, with respect 
and affection I still remember the enthusiastic author of the Evidences of 
Prophecy, and with pleasure, the days once spent at his manse of St. 
Cyrus. 

2 Ezekiel xxvi. 2. 3 Ibid, xxviii. 24. 

E e 2 



420 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



their independence centimes before their old despisers, 
the Phoenicians, lost theirs though the foundation of 
the Phoenician state had by a thousand years preceded 
that of the Jews. 

JSTor is this by any means an isolated case of a dis- 
tinct Biblical prophecy and a flat historical contradic- 
tion of it. So much, indeed, is the nonfulfilment of 
the Hebrew prophecies the rule, that one is filled with 
amazement at the blind, or impudent, audacity of putting 
forward the fulfilment of these prophecies as evidences 
of the truth of Christianity. But the nonfulfilment of 
the prophecies of the Jews against their neighbours is 
but a small matter for anyone but a Christian. It is of 
more general interest to consider what would have to 
be the characteristics of a prophecy against a neighbour- 
ing nation, which would now, whatever we might think 
of the probability of its fulfilment, commend itself, at 
least, to our moral sense. Such a prophecy, however 
passionate the patriotism of the author of it, would have 
to be free of mere malignant envy, and unmanly vin- 
dictiveness. It would have to be but the utterance of 
a profound persuasion of that great moral Law de- 
monstrated by History, that injustice is ever followed by 
evil consequences, if not to the perpetrators of it, to 
their children ; and that, however it may be in the 
short life of an individual, moral corruption is ever, in 
the longer life of a nation, assuredly followed by 
worldly misfortune. And the descriptions of coming 
evil in such a prophecy would have to be not only free 
of personal exultation, but touched with the noble sad- 
ness of sympathy with all suffering, even just. rTow, 



Chap. I. THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 421 

what at Tyre struck me more than even the untruth, 
was the low morality of the Jewish prophecies against 
it. And as this low morality was found generally to 
characterize the prophecies of the Jews against their 
neighbours, the remark seemed not unimportant, when 
one considered that these prophecies are part of those 
Scriptures that are, throughout Christendom, made the 
school text-book of moral and religious instruction. 

Do but read, — with the standard in your heart by 
which prophecies against a neighbouring nation would 
now be judged, — do but read Ezekiel against Tyre, or 
almost any other prophecy against neighbours of the 
Jews. Where, in these prophecies, is there freedom from 
—or where, rather, is there anything but — malignant 
envy and unmanly vindictiveness ? Where is there 
any pure and lofty utterance of but a profound per- 
suasion of a great moral fact ? Where is there any 
touch of noble sadness — or where, rather, is there any- 
thing but personal exultation — over the suffering fore- 
seen ? Not with an unprejudiced indignation against 
iniquity, but with the most unblushing expression of 
personal vindictiveness, 6 because Tyrus had said against 
Jerusalem, Aha,' 4 therefore ' is it announced that 4 the 
Lord is against Tyrus.' Not because only of a pro- 
found persuasion of a great moral fact, but because of 
perceiving, or imagining, a pride hurtful to their own 
envious self-esteem, and, according to the ordinary 
superstition of antiquity with respect to the <j)06vo<z 
6ean> provocative of the wrath of their national god, 
' therefore were strangers, the terrible of the nations, to 
be brought against Tyrus.' And not with a regretful 



422 PILGRIM-MEMORIES. Paet V. 

pity for suffering, but with the base exultation of an 
ignoble Chauvinism, it is announced that even e the 
daughters of Tyrus should be slain by the sword,' and 
4 she should be made a place to spread nets upon,' 
and that 6 pestilence and blood should be sent into the 
streets of Siclon ; ' for so 6 there should be no more a 
pricking brier unto the house of Israel, nor any grieving 
thorn of all that are round about them that despise them,' 
and their despisers should know the power of the 
Hebrew god Yahveh. Could anything be more hateful, 
more basely barbaric, more utterly contemptible, than 
all this? Where is envious cowardly vindictiveness 
to be found, if not in these Jewish prophecies? Or 
how otherwise are we to qualify revengeful exultation 
in the destruction of variously offending neighbours, and 
especially where such destruction is imagined to be 
wrought, not by oneself in manful combat, but by 
others? Do but throw off the blinding veil of cus- 
tomary cant, and judge these prophecies as one would 
judge similar contemporary prophecies — were such 
possible. 

But they are not possible. Tor we have certainly 
had contemporary provocatives of such prophecies. 
Bitter the feelings of Frenchmen have naturally been 
against their German conquerors, and especially with 
respect to what is being proved the unjust annexation of 
Alsace and Lorraine. But no great French writer could 
have stooped — I question if any hack even of the daily 
press did stoop — to such utterly hateful prophecies of 
revenge as these Hebrew ones. Compare with these 
Hebrew prophecies Victor Hugo's c L'Annee Terrible,' 



Chap. I. THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 423 

and then judge of them as standards of moral and re- 
ligious instruction. 

Of course, low as we may judge the moral character 
of these prophecies, they may have considerable poetic 
merits. There are, what Beaudelaire called fleurs du 
mat. But such merits are not at present in question. 
And in reference to the moral character of these pro- 
phecies, it is to be noted that our judgment would be 
no less condemnatory of them, were we, instead of the 
Humanitarian standard of modern Europe, to try them 
by the standard of that Buddhistic morality which was 
contemporary with them. 1 Our interpretation and con- 
demnation of these prophecies is also verified by the 
fact that travellers are all unanimous in affirming that 
self-conceit, envy, and vindictiveness, evidently con- 
nected, and implying each other, are, — though but too 
common among us all, — especially characteristic evil 
qualities of the Semitic race — Arabs and Jews. 2 And 
further, it is to be noted in reference more particularly 
to the prophecy against Tyre, and. certain other neigh- 
bours, that they occupied territories which the Jews 
wanted for themselves, and were never able to get 
possession of. God, they declared, had promised them 
that their western boundary should be 6 the Great Sea, 
till a man come over against Hamath and Damascus ; ' 3 
and yet, notwithstanding this divine promise, and pro- 
phetic declaration, they never had but a mere fraction 

1 These prophecies range from the seventh to the fifth century, 
and Buddhism arose in the sixth century B.C. 

2 4 Western envy bears no comparison with Eastern.' — Palgrave, Cen- 
tral Arabia, vol. ii. p. 135. 

3 Compare Numbers xxxiv. and Ezekiel xlvii. 



424 



PIL GPIM-MEM0RIE8. 



paet v. 



of this coast-line. Very natural expressions, therefore, 
of those worse qualities of self-conceit, envy, and vin- 
clictiveness are these Jewish prophecies against their 
neighbours. Such is the evil of which these pro- 
phecies are the flowers. And well, therefore, might 
the Jews of old be esteemed 6 haters of the human 
race,' 1 and be hated by it in return. 

But see what the historical consequences were 
of the nonfulfilment of these prophecies, and how con- 
vincing the evidence thereby afforded of the efficacy 
of Moral Forces as historical causes. Instead of the 
promised destruction of all their enemies round about, 
and the extension of their little hill-territory till it 
included not only the rich maritime plains of Philistia 
and Phoenicia, but Lebanon also, Caelesyria, and Anti- 
Lebanon ; and instead of the destruction of, or — as in 
a milder mood was sometimes imagined, with a conceit 
one scarce knows whether to qualify as sublime or 
ridiculous — an equal alliance with the great Empires on 
either side of them, so that Israel should be third with 
Egypt and with Assyria, and £ a blessing in the midst of 
the land,' 2 the J ews found the two so-called monar- 
chies, or rather chieftainships, of their southern and 
northern hills absorbed in one great Empire after 
another, and not even as provinces, but as mere districts 
of provinces, and themselves, as troublesome hill-tribes, 
\ passed from one imperial conqueror to another. And 

1 Dean Stanley endeavours to show that 'the physical structure 
and situation of their country agrees with this peculiarity.' — Sinai and 
Palestine, pp. 112, and following. 

2 Isaiah xix. 24. 



Chap. I. 



THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 



425 



yet Mi Camo-Ca Baalim Yahveh* 'Who among the 
gods is like thee Yahveh ! ' — this, which was indeed 
but another way of saying, Who among the peoples is 
like unto thee, Israel ! — still continued to be the battle- 
cry of their unbroken life, as a race at least, when no 
more as an independent nation. And immense, there- 
fore, we must see, cannot but have been the moral 
revolution wrought among the Jews by enslavements 
which not only brought them under the influence of 
other and larger ideas than their own, but utterly 
falsified all the promises of their prophets in the name 
of their national hill-god. 2 

And immense was the revolution. These tragic 
disasters, these overthrows, and utter mockeries of 
their vain dreams of pre-eminence had indeed, as an 
effect, but a fanatising of their old natural arrogance, 
and theocratic superstition. This, however, was but 
one, and the least important effect of the nonfulfilment 
of the vain prophecies of the Jewish seers, and of the 
foreign influences which accompanied those enslave- 
ments which were the falsification of those prophecies. 
Chief historical consequence was an enlargement and 
spiritualising of all the old Jewish beliefs — the trans- 

1 The words represented by the letters M. C. C. B. Y., which Judas, 
the son of Mattathias, bore on his standard in the revolt against 
Antiochus Epiphanes, and from which he acquired the name of Maccabee, 
166 b.c. 

2 That Yahveh was nothing more than this till the Jews came within 
the scope of the great general monotheistic revolution, dating from about 
the sixth century B.C., I believe I shall be able clearly to prove, and hence 
the utter untenableness, as historical fact, of Mr. Matthew Arnold's 
* literary ' interpretation of Yahveh as ' the Eternal that maketh for 
Righteousness '—a notion so abstract that I question whether it is even 
expressible in Hebrew. 



426 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



formation of their national hill-god into a universal 
God like the Ahnra-Mazda worshipped by their Per- 
sian conquerors ; a vindication of the supremacy and 
justice of Yah veh in a mode more worthy of this 
transformed conception of him ; and the corresponding 
formation of the old prophecies of the destruction of 
their neighbours into visions of Universal Eestoration, of 
individual compensation in a Future Life, and of a more 
or less spiritually conceived Messiah, or Deliverer. The 
proof of this is to be found in that most important, per- 
haps, of the results of modern criticism — the discovery 
of the chronology of the Hebrew Scriptures — of the 
dates, that is, of the composition, or of the recasting, 
and editing, of their various component parts. But as 
Christianity was a development of Judaism, the impor- 
tance of the consideration of this change in Judaism, in 
any scientific explanation of the origin of Christianity, 
is evident. And, considering the causes of this change 
in Judaism, we may see how utterly false is the view 
given of the actual facts of history by the ordinary 
insistance on the fulfilment of those Jewish prophecies 
which the Jews themselves found anything but fulfilled. 

Such were some of the thoughts suggested in the 
ruins of the Cathedral of that second Tyre, more 
splendid than ever was the first ; and that, notwithstand- 
ing the prophecies against it of those neighbouring hill- 
tribes who, in this feminine fashion, vented themselves 
because ' Tyrus,' in mockery of their desire, but inability 
to conquer and annex it, 4 had said, Aha ! ' But Mr. 
Buckle expressing himself as feeling greatly exhausted, 
we went back to a garden on the Mole of Alexander, 



Chap. I. 



THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 



427 



where we lunched and rested, while Tyrian girls 
brought us various things for sale. And here, pur- 
suing my meditations, it was not only clear how great 
is the historical importance of Moral Forces — Wants 
of Oneness, Wants of the Ideal, arising from discor- 
dance between Inward Energy and Outward Environ- 
ment ; but the first clear glimpse seemed here also 
to be obtained of what was still needed to complete 
the enunciation of the Ultimate Law of History. 

For we have here, with such a completeness and 
vividness, as on no other spot I know of on earth, 
brought before us two great ages of Human His- 
tory, which, the more we consider them, the more 
clearly they appear as two distinct ages in the develop- 
ment of Humanity, and ages of which the later is 
distinguished from the earlier by nothing less than a 
new action of Moral Forces. On the one hand, we 
have here brought before us that earlier age in which 
the Ocean-cities of Phoenicia nourished, and sent forth 
their adventurous colonists — the age in which Egypt 
and Assyria were the great Western Powers — for west- 
ward of them, during all, probably, but the last of 
the milleniums of their existence, there were but 
savages — and the age to which belong the chief ex- 
tant monuments of those empires. And the scene is 
also more crowded than any other remarkable one of 
that First Age with memories of great personages and 
events of that Second Age to which we may reckon 
our own civilisation to belong. 

Taken back to the time of the Jewish prophecies 
against Tyre, we are reminded of the immense moral 



428 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



change that soon after took place in the tone and 
character of the best Hebrew literature ; and recalling 
the elate of this change, the Sixth Century B.C., and its 
coincidence with that of a similar new moral elevation 
in the literatures of all the contemporary civilisations ; 
there comes into view, from these ruins of Tyre, a vast 
moral revolution, initiating a new age of Humanity. 
Then, this Mole of Alexander where we now are, the 
Euin s of Palsetyrus, which we have just visited, and 
the Fountain of Alexander, where we encamped last 
night, bring us almost into something like personal 
contact with the greatest, perhaps, of the three great 
empire- commissioned agents of that Eevolution — Cyrus, 
Alexander, and Caesar. But another, and even greater 
historical figure we see on these sands, as we recall the 
Evangelical tradition of the visit of Jesus to ' the coasts 
of Tvre and Sidon,'* and the Mediaeval legend of 
Palaetyrus being the scene of his encounter with the 
Syro -Phoenician woman. Yet further, the walls yonder 
of the Cathedral, that once enshrined the tombs of 
Origen and Frederic Barbarossa, bring vividly before us 
the centuries, both of the rise of the wonderful new 
Osirian mythology that formed itself about the traditions 
of the life of Jesus, and of the culmination, and first 
decline, of the power of the priests of this New Osirian- 
ism. And what do the present ruins of Tyre bring 
visibly before us but the triumph of Semitic Islamism 
over but half- Aryan Christianism, and the doom of, at 
least, the political power of Islam, when the Creed of 
the West has shaken itself free of its Semitic Judaism ? 
Such are the great events of which the memories 



Chap. I. THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 429 

crowd upon us at Tyre, and which, in some at least of 
their characteristic scenes, appear almost to pass before 
our eyes. But, behind and beyond all these, are scenes 
and events of that earlier period of the greatness of 
Tyre, which belongs to the First Age of Civilisation. 
Compare then, in their most essential conceptions, and 
in what is most characteristic of their moral feeling, the 
civilisations before with those after that Sixth Century, 
when, partaking in the general moral revolution of the 
time, Hebrew prophecy rose to somewhat more elevated 
strains than its enviously vindictive cursings of Tyre ; 
and see whether there is not some great general fact 
to be found marking, since then, the history of Hu- 
manity ; and such a fact as to show what the process is of 
the advance of human thought from that earlier concep- 
tion of Causation which I have defined as that of c One- 
sided Determination,' to that later conception of it which 
I have defined as that of ' Mutual Determination.' 

Elsewhere I shall have to develop the thoughts 
which I thus but indicate. To proceed here with 
this personal narrative. Leaving at last the garden 
on the Mole of Alexander, we observed with sur- 
prise the Prince's yacht already in the offing, and 
remarked the rapidity of progress on the royal road to 
learning. Then getting into a boat, we proceeded 
to a more careful exploration of the more ancient 
ruins. Thereafter, landing and remounting, we rode on ; 
passed, in about half an hour from the gates, a large 
fountain, much resorted to for its medicinal qualities ; 
and came, in about an hour and a half more, to the 
banks of the Tyrian Eiver. Through a beautiful gorge 



430 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



this double-named river 1 here flows across the plain, 
after bursting its way, by a wild and romantic ravine 
of some thirty miles long, through the Lebanon chain. 
In order more thoroughly to possess, as it were, its 
beauty, down through its oleander thickets I went, 
stripped, and threw myself into the lovely stream. On 
its banks we encamped for the night. And above us, 
and around, lightened and thundered a magnificent 
storm. 

Next morning, crossing the river by a modern 
single-arched bridge, we started for Sidon. But still, 
as the previous days, we rode through a solitude. 
Throughout the whole plain of Phoenicia the soil in- 
deed is good, and water abundant ; but so shameful 
is the misgov eminent of the country, that only under 
the walls of the towns, or amid the fastnesses of the 
mountains, are life and property even partially secure. 
We pass on one side, and about an hour from the river, 
an oblong of those standing stones which, familiar as one 
is with them in the far north of Scotland, 2 cannot but 
strongly arrest one's attention on this Syrian plain. A 
couple of hours further on we pass the site of Zare- 
phath or Sarepta, with, for Jews and Christians, its 
legends of Elijah, 3 and for Gentiles and Heathens its 
fame for good wine : 

Et dulcia Bacchi 
Munera qnne Sarepta ferax, quse Gaza, crearat. 4 

1 Nalir el-Litany, it is called in its upper, and Nahr el-Kasimiyeh, in 
its lower part. 

2 Particularly in Aberdeenshire. See Forbes-Leslie, Early Races of 
Scotland, and compare Fergusson, Rude Stone Monuments, 

3 1 Kings xvii. 8-24 ; and compare Luke iv. 26. 

4 Corippus. 



Chap. I. 



THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS. 



431 



We lunched by a fountain gratefully shadowed by a 
rare clump of trees. Eiding on, we cross the well- 
named ' Flowery Stream ' (Nahr ez-Zaherany). And 
coming, at length, to the fields and gardens by which 
Sidon is surrounded, we ride past its citadel (an old 
shattered tower, said to have been built by Louis IX. 
in the year 1253.) and under the walls that run com- 
pletely across the neck of the promontory on which the 
town is built, and so enter its gates. 

But our first inquiry, on entering Sidon, was unfor- 
tunately to be for a doctor. Again Mr. Buckle 
was ill. The next morning we moved to the Con- 
vent, as it was thought that he would there be more 
comfortable than in the lodgings we had first gone 
into. Kind and attentive w T ere the good padres , and 
the French physician. But it was not till the third day 
after that of our arrival, that Mr. Buckle was able 
again to take the road. 

Glad, however, I should have been to have stayed 
very much longer at %ihcbv avOefxoeo-cra, 'Flowery 
Sidon.' Magnificently beautiful, my first evening on the 
Convent-roof, was the sunset over the Sea, and the 
thunderstorm on Lebanon. Charming also was the 
saintly innocence of the old Padre Germano by whom 
I was joined, and his talk of musica e pittura. Just be- 
cause of my utter opposition to his system of belief as 
not false only, but pernicious, I rejoiced to be able in 
his case, as in that of my other Franciscan friend at 
Jerusalem, to have an affection for the man ; and, as it 
gave him pleasure, I willingly complied with his re- 
quest to come to his cell, and hear him read some of his 



432 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



favourite passages from saintly Lives. And interesting 
was my visit, with the French Consul, to the excava- 
tions, and his talk, by the way, on the Eastern Ques- 
tion. But still other interests, charms, and beauties are 
to be found at Sidon. Many-fountained and many- 
rilled gardens and orchards fill the whole plain to the 
foot of Lebanon — a forest of exquisite foliage and de- 
licious fruit — oranges and lemons, figs and almonds, 
plums, apricots, and peaches, pomegranates, pears, and 
bananas. And in these Eclens are Eves. 

Somewhat uninteresting is the ride along the rest of 
the Phoenician plain to Beirut — though, indeed, we not 
only pass the site of a battle between Antiochus the 
Great and Ptolemy, King of Egypt (218 B.C.), but 
also the beautiful little bay which Muslims do, and 
Christians ought, to believe to be the scene of that won- 
derful, but by no means most wonderful event of that 
c Sacred History ' which they have both adopted from 
the Jews — the 4 vomiting-out ' of Jonah by the whale. 

Owing to Mr. Buckle's weak condition, it was not 
till the second day after leaving Sidon that we came to 
the long sandy promontory of Beirut, and skirting its 
great pine- and olive-groves, or rather forests, we 
entered, and passed through the town. For we were to 
take up our quarters at the Bellevue Hotel, about a mile 
to the west of it, and overlooking the bay on the sands 
of which St. George had his famous fight with the dragon. 
Halfback we seemed again in Europe. For Beirut looks 
almost a little Alexandria, and it is, indeed, the chief 
seaport of Syria. May St. George's banner, at no 
distant day, float over the fortifications of both ! 



Chap. I. THE MISTRESS OF THE SEAS, 



433 



Mr. Buckle's last letter, written the very day of our 
arrival here, the 14th May, is remarkable as showing 
how unaware he himself was of what events proved to 
have been his utterly overworn state : — 

£ We have arrived here to-day all well, after a 
journey from Jerusalem, interesting beyond all descrip- 
tion. We diverged westward, after visiting the Sea of 
Galilee, in order to travel through Phoenicia. We saw 
Tyre and Sidon, and got much valuable information 
respecting the excavations conducted there for the last 
eighteen months by the French Government. . . . 
To-morrow we shall see the Assyrian remains near 
here ; and next day start for Damascus, and Baalbeck, 
and return to Beyrout by the Cedars of Lebanon, the 
oldest and grandest trees in the world. 

6 1 have most reluctantly abandoned Constantinople, 
because, although we should be there and up the Danube 
long before the unhealthy season, I am advised that 
the nights on the river are occasionally damp and 
dangerous for weak eyes. And as I cannot quite satisfy 
myself about the protection which berths afford, I don't 
choose to risk my little Eddy boy to having inflamed 
conjunctiva ; for he has now had nothing in the least the 
matter with his eyes for more than five months, and I 
intend to bring him back sound and invigorated in all 
respects. The only other route to Vienna is by Trieste. 
We must, therefore, take the steamer from here to 
Smyrna, Syra, and Athens, but shall see little or 
nothing of Greece, as the weather will be too hot. The 
journey is not very interesting, but we have had our fill 
of interest, and must think of health. 

F F 



434 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



' I expect to be at Trieste about the middle of June ; 
and as you said that the end of July would suit you to 
reach Vienna, this leaves me a clear month, which I 
purpose spending at Gratz or Gratz in Styria, on the 
railroad between Trieste and Vienna. It is very healthy, 
has fine air, and is well known for masters and 
education.' 

Such, but a fortnight before his death, was Mr. 
Buckle's last letter. 



435 



CHAPTER II. 

THE VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 

In the afternoon of May 16, and after but one com- 
plete day at Beirut, we were driving up the steep 
terrace-cultivated sides of Lebanon, in a carriage and 
five, (one of the cattle a mule,) with snowy summits 
above us, and below, the cloud-shadowed splendour of 
the sea. And 6 not the luxurious Java, not the richly 
wooded Borneo, not the majestic Sumatra or Celebes, 
not the paradise-like Ceylon, far less the grand but 
naked mountains of South Africa, or the low im- 
penetrable woods of the West Indies, are to be com- 
pared,' says M. Van de Velde, 1 6 to these south-eastern 
projecting mountains of Lebanon. In those lands all is 
green, or all is bare. An Indian landscape has some- 
thing so monotonous in its superabundance of wood and 
jungle, that one wishes in vain to see intermingled with 
rocky cliffs, or with towns and villages. In the bare 
table-lands of the Cape Colony, the eye discovers nothing 
but rocky cliffs. . . . But here, there are woods and 
mountains, streams and villages, bold rocks and green 
cultivated fields, land- and sea-views. Here, in one 
word, you find all that the eye could desire to behold 
on this earth. . . . The whole of Northern Canaan lies 



1 Vol. ii. p. 433-7 ; quoted by Stanley, Sinai and Talestine } 411-12. 

F F 2 



436 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



at our feet. Is not this Sidon ? Are not these Sarepta, 
and Tyre, and Bas-el-Abiad ? I see also the Castle of 
Shuleif, and the gorge of the Leontes, and the hills of 
Safed, and, in the distance, the basin of the Sea of 
Tiberias, with the hills of Bashan, far, far away, and all 
these hundreds of villages between the spot we are at 
and the sea-coast. . . . Half a day would not suffice 
for taking the angles of such an ocean of villages, towns, 
castles, rivers, hills, and capes.' 

Mr. Buckle, amid the glorious excitement of the 
scene, was so much himself again that I could not but 
think that, after all, he probably knew his own powers 
better than any of those who had dissuaded him from 
this journey to Damascus. He had, indeed, never been 
entirely well since the day that, just after the joyful 
expression of his feeling of health and hope, he so 
suddenly broke down as we were crossing the p]ain of 
Esdraelon ; having, since then, been laid up at Nazareth ; 
ill at Acre and at Tyre ; and laid up again at Sidon. 
But the elasticity of his so often repeated recoveries from 
the most prostrate conditions might still justify him, I 
hoped, in making this final call on his bodily powers. 
Notwithstanding, however, the plan noted in his last 
letter, Mr. Buckle yielded so far to the remon- 
strances of friends at Beirut, as, by the new contract 
here made with a new dragoman, to leave it in his 
power to return direct from Damascus without going 
round by Baalbeck and the Cedars. But, as these were 
main objects with myself, I made a separate con- 
tract with another dragoman ; and, with this long ex- 
pedition before me, found it necessary to start after but 



Chap. II. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 437 



a single clay at Beirut. Most deeply it is now to be re- 
gretted that Mr. Buckle did not consent to recruit his 
exhausted energies, and so, most probably, save his life, 
by a week's inhaling of the mingled sea and mountain 
breezes at the comfortable suburban hotel where we had 
put up, with its beautiful outlook on St. George's Bay 
and Lebanon, and its natural sea-baths in hollows of 
the rocks. But he started on the same 16th clay of 
May that I was obliged to leave. We were thus 
again journeying together, and, as I have said, Mr. 
Buckle, amid the glorious excitement of the scene, was 
so much himself again, that I could not but think 
that he had known his own powers best when he had 
resolved on setting-out, at once, on this journey to 
Damascus. 

We had not had one discussion, so unwell had he 
been, during all the days of our journeying along the 
Phoenician coast. But now Mr. Buckle launched out 
on the theory of exchanges ; the effect of the gold dis- 
coveries on prices ; and the ultimate causes of the in- 
terest of money. I can imagine that it may strike 
some readers as almost grotesque that a man should 
give expression to his delight in the invigorating 
breezes and magnificent scenery of Lebanon by plung- 
ing into a disquisition on some of the most abstruse 
problems of Political Economy. Yet this was very 
characteristic. As the reader may remember, 1 it was in a 
similar disquisition that, as we looked down from the 
Mount of Olives on the Garden of Gethsemane, and 
across to the Mosque of Omar, on the site of the 

1 Above, pp. 297-8. 



438 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



Temple — Mr. Buckle gave vent to his excitement on 
the very spot probably where Jesus had discoursed 
with his disciples on the imagined end of the world 
within that generation. The psychology of it, as I sup- 
pose, is that the theme on which one fancies one shines 
most, and can speak with least fear of contradiction, 
is in most accordance with an elated mood. And this 
may be taken as an illustration of that dependence of 
the succession of thoughts on moods which seems to 
me directly to contradict that Law of Intelligence 
affirmed by Mr. Spencer. 1 

But in the ascent of Lebanon, and in the descent to 
Ctefe-Syria, the great Hollow^ as the Greeks, or Cleft, 
as the Hebrews, called it, of Syria, Mr. Buckle talked 
also, with no little self- congratulation, of that connection 
which he had discovered, and pointed- out, between the 
two great w r orks of Adam Smith, the 6 Theory of Moral 
Sentiments,' and the 'Inquiry into the Wealth of 
Nations.' 4 Between the two works there elapsed an 
interval of seventeen years, the " Wealth of Nations n 
not being published till 1775. But what shows that 
to their author both were part of a single scheme, is 
the notable circumstance that, so early as 1753, he had 
laid down the principles which his later work contains. 
This was while his former work was still in meditation, 
and before it had seen the light. It is therefore clear 
that the study which he made, first, of Sympathy, and 

1 The Law, namely, that the strength of the tendency which the 
antecedent of any psychical change has to be followed by its consequent 
is proportionate simply to the persistency of the union between the 
external things they symbolize. See Principles of Psychology, p. 520-1. 
Compare In the Morningland, vol. i. pp. 317-20. 



Chap. II. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 439 

then of Selfishness, was not a capricious or accidental 
arrangement, but was the consequence of that vast idea 
which presided over all his labours, and which, when 
they are rightly understood, gives to them a magnificent 
unity.' 1 But singular it appeared to me that, with this 
great example before him, Mr. Buckle should have ex- 
pressed himself with such absoluteness as to the non-effect 
of Moral Forces in History ; and that he should not, 
like Adam Smith, have eliminated them merely as an 
artifice of scientific method ; and to permit him to treat 
with greater clearness of the effect of Intellectual 
Forces. 

We encamped . that evening on the green base of 
Lebanon, overlooking the Great Hollow. But Mr. 
Buckle was again prostrate. ' Ah, this body, — it is no 
body at all ! ' he bitterly exclaimed. As I afterwards 
recalled the scene, it seemed to me as if he had here, at 
length, had some foreboding that, if he crossed, as next 
day we proposed doing, he would never recross the 
great valley that now lay enshrouded in darkness at 
our feet. And perhaps, in his bitter melancholy that 
night, it indeed was to him the Valley of the Shadow 
of Death. 

But gloriously that life-giving Sun, — worshipped of 
yore up the Hollow at his Heliopolitan Temple, the 
wonder of the world, — rose next morning over the mag- 
nificent plain. New life seemed again put into Mr. 
Buckle ; and, as the road was not then further available 
for carriages, we mounted our horses. But rich as is 
the plain, and swarming as are the mountains with in- 

1 History of Civilisation, ii. 442. 



440 



PIL GBIM-MEMOJRIES. 



Part V. 



habitants, insecurity and oppression keep the valley 
almost deserted. Two hundred square miles are here 
comparatively waste, that, were Syria, as it is to be hoped 
it soon may be, under a British Governor-General, 
might be one vast cotton-field, with its hillsides and up- 
land vales covered with mulberry-plantations and silk- 
manufactories. The sight of such unrighteous govern- 
ment and waste of Earth's riches stirred in me feelings 
similar to those with which I had beheld the robber- 
overrun plain of Esdraelon, and which had given rise to 
that most animated of my discussions with Mr. Buckle 
which had also been almost the last of any considerable 
importance. But, recovered though he now in some 
measure was from the prostration of the previous even- 
ing, I did not attempt to renew with him a discussion 
for which he still seemed unable. And of a very diffe- 
rent character was the conversation of which this Mid- 
Lebanon Hollow happened to be the scene. 

The fatigue of riding across the plain made it 
necessary for Mr. Buckle to rest for several hours at 
the end of the pass, at the foot of the ascent of Anti- 
Lebanon. It was under a grandly spreading oak that 
we had our carpets spread ; and here Mr. Buckle spoke 
of the happiness — till his recent great and single grief 
— the happiness of his life. For a year, when about 
twenty, he had had a great annoyance, rather than 
grief. But since then he had had twenty years of 
almost unbroken happiness : first, the plan of a great 
work gradually becoming clearer to him ; then, every 
easement, furtherance, and facility in the execution of 
his plan ; and finally, almost instant and universal 



Chap. II. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 441 

recognition and applause on the publication of his first 
volume. iSTor was it the final triumph only, but the 
long quiet years of work that here, with heartfelt 
pleasure, Mr. Buckle recalled — the delight of morning 
composition, the comfort of recruiting and stimulating 
meals, and the pleasure of evening reading. And all 
the books he had read, or referred to, were on the walls 
of his own study, or the other rooms of his own, and his 
mother's house. For his fortune was ample enough to 
enable him to collect the largest private library in 
London, and yet save money every year, Few men are 
thus rich. Enough for their hobbies even, and yet 
never spending their Ml incomes. Yes ; his life had been 
very happy. 

And no doubt it had been exceptionally so. Well 
might Miss Taylor begin her 6 Biographical Notice ' 
of him with the remark that 4 few men, perhaps, 
have been placed throughout life under circumstances 
more favourable to the development and utilisation of in- 
tellectual power than Henry Thomas Buckle.' A happy 
life may be defined as one in which the desires are no 
more than commensurate with the powers of gratify- 
ing them. Such a state of the desires may be artificially 
produced by discipline that succeeds in reining them in. 
Far happier, however, must be the life when, as should 
seem to have been the case with Mr. Buckle, there is 
naturally such an equilibrium between desires and the 
conditions of their gratification. 

And yet such happiness has its disadvantages. One 
thus almost entirely loses much of truth in one's con- 
ception of existence — of whatever advantage such 



442 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



truth may be, or whatever value it may have. And 
arguing very naturally from the happiness of his own 
experience of life to the happiness of life generally, 
Mr. Buckle looked with a complacency upon it which 
I could neither share, 'nor think founded on other than 
a very superficial view, and very exceptional experience 
of it. 

Life, I thought, even with but human capacities, and 
even on but this little planet, might, indeed, be happier 
even than that of any fabled heaven. Tor, if we 
could but realise it, we are even now in Eternity, 
even now in the presence of the Infinite. The know- 
ledge also accessible to us, even with our present 
capacities, and on this little earth-ball, is more than 
a thousand lives could exhaust the interest, wonder, 
and beauty of, or, save with failing force, fail to derive 
ever-new delight from. For knowledge, in its true 
meaning, is nothing else than a godlike self-and-world- 
consciousness. And, to those capable of thus conceiv- 
ing the meaning of knowledge, there cannot — in the 
equating of self-and- world-consciousness with the reality 
of things, in giving to such consciousness artistic ex- 
pression, and in thus binding ourselves more intimately 
with the whole of which we are parts — there cannot 
but be a perennial source of the noblest happiness. 

But in order to such a high pursuit and expression of 
knowledge, and, therewith, serene enj oyment of existence, 
the needs of the body must be satisfied without anxiety, 
and the needs of the heart without misery too pro- 
longed. These two prime conditions, however, of happi- 
ness, not only are now wanting to the vast majority of 



Chap.II. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 443 

human beings, but have been wanting to them during 
all the unnumbered ages of. their successive generations. 
I do not see, therefore, how it can be contended, if one 
looks seriously at all the facts, that human life as a 
whole is happy ; or that more can be said of it than 
that it has a happy side, or rather, a side on which, as 
on the upper surface of a rusty medal lying in the sun, 
there are gleams of brightness. That this is no mere 
Pessimist exaggeration seems to me sufficiently proved 
by this one fact alone, though many others may be 
cited : the fact that the great stimulant to virtuous con- 
duct in the oldest, and still the most-believed of all the 
three great moral religions of the Modern Age, is the 
hope of attaining, as the reward of such conduct, the 
utter extinction of conscious individual existence. And 
this single fact of the Buddhist's religious striving for 
an extinction of existence is, I think, sufficient, not 
only to silence Optimism, but to stand as such an indict- 
ment against an almighty Creator-God, as makes of 
the worship of such a being, Devil-worship. 

Nor was it merely in giving him what seemed to 
me a too-complacent general view of existence, that the 
exceptional happiness of Mr. Buckle's life had had its 
disadvantages. Had he had more experience of what 
life is to the majority of human beings, it would hardly, 
I thought, have been possible for him not to see through 
the fallacies by which he maintained his characteristic 
theory of the non- effect of Moral Forces as historical 
causes. For what are these forces ? Wants — wants 
arising from the miseries, not only of intellectual and 
emotional, but also of physical needs. And had Mr. 



444 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



Buckle's individual experience been such as to enable 
him in any degree sympathetically to realise the fright- 
ful depths of historical misery, it would hardly have 
been possible for him but to feel, as well as to see that, 
from such misery, forces must arise, as, indeed, forces 
have arisen — forces of the most revolutionary kind ; 
or, rather, such forces as alone are revolutionary ; and 
forces without which those Intellectual Forces which he 
considered omnipotent, the forces of increased and 
diffused knowledge, would neither have arisen, nor had 
anything to work upon. Philosophy itself arises from 
conditions similar to those in which, according to the 
poet, his art has its origin : — 

cradled into poetry by wrong, 
Men learn in suffering what they teach in song. 1 

And yet further. But for exceptionally fortunate 
conditions of worldly happiness, would not Mr. Buckle 
have had more sympathy with such religious fanatics 
as even the Scottish Covenanters ? For what was the 
cause of their fanaticism ; the deepest cause of their 
embracing that peculiar modification of the Christian 
Ideal which characterized them ; and the cause of the 
intolerant desperation with which they clung to it? 
Was not the deepest cause simply the experienced 
misery, or, at least, unsatisfyingness of human life ; the 
necessity of some heavenly ideal to make it worth 
living ; and the adequacy to their intellectual culture 
of that Ideal which they adopted? Would not the 
seeing, the feeling, of this moral cause even of a so-far 

1 Shelley, Julian and Madalo 



Chap. II. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 445 

immoral Ideal have disturbed his soul with pity rather 
than with wrath ; pity of the wretched world Ave make, 
the oppressor and the oppressed, and pity of the neces- 
sity of it all ? And yet, would there have been in such 
sympathetic insight anything to lessen his just reproba- 
tion of that intolerance of which those who used it 
were no less the victims than those against whom it 
was used ? I think not. 

But yet further to trace the effects of the happiness 
of his life on Mr. Buckle's opinions. In such happiness 
the cause seemed to me, in part at least, to be found, of 
such an argument appearing to him to have any force 
as that on which he rested his belief in a supernatural 
memoried Immortality. He could not stand up and 
live, were not such an Immortality a fact. His affec- 
tions required such an Immortality to be a fact, and 
therefore a fact it was. That him, or indeed any of us, 
our affections could 4 conspire to deceive,' was not to 
be imagined. I have already 1 had occasion to remark 
on this truly wonderful argument. And here I will 
only add that, in Mr. Buckle's own express and willing 
admission of, and indeed dwelling upon, the happiness 
of his life, there is a confirmation of what, on that oc- 
casion, I said with respect to this argument — that, in a 
man capable of comprehensive reflection, it betrays an 
immense inexperience of the realities of life ; that it is 
like the pathetic cry of a child, not hurt only, but as- 
tonished at being hurt, and sure of pity and consolation , 
and that, but for a surely exceptionally happy life, he 
would have seen that his own doctrine of the com- 



1 See above, pp. 75 %. 



446 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



parative nothingness of the individual had an applica- 
tion which, with a silent yet extinguishing irony, smiles 
at such exclamations as — £ I could not stand up and live 
were it not true ! ' 

JSTor, as it seemed to me, had the worldly happiness 
of Mr. Buckle's life been without effect on the other 
great article of his religious creed — his conception of 
God as but a First Cause. For, apart from the philo- 
sophical question as to whether there is any necessity 
for conceiving a First Cause at all, or whether, if such 
a cause be conceived, it is not found in Matter and its 
properties, which there is certainly no necessity for 
imagining created — apart from this philosophical ques- 
tion, I think that the moral needs of any one but a 
man who had found his worldly circumstances entirely 
happy would have so influenced reflection as certainly 
to have landed him in a conception of God, less wholly 
without satisfaction for the heart than the mere Causa- 
eausarum-God of the Deist. And if Mr. Buckle's 
own moral needs had thus influenced his conception of 
God, as they certainly did his belief in Immortality, 
it would have been, at least, one reason more for his 
questioning, and hence probably seeing, the fallacy of 
those arguments by which, while admitting the impor- 
tance of Moral Forces in the case of individuals, he 
supported his denial of their efficacy as historical 
causes. 

Such were my reflections on Mr. Buckle's pleased 
retrospect of the happiness of his life. And though I 
certainly thought that — seeing how general unhappiness 
is — the exceptional happiness of Mr. Buckle's life had 



Chap. II. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 447 



had its disadvantages in giving very superficial and 
false views of human life, and of the causes of its his- 
torical phenomena ; yet, after that premature death, from 
which he was now but a few days distant, it was with 
pleasure that I remembered that his very last lengthened 
talk had been on his life's happiness. Melancholy 
enough it was that he should die in the prime of life, 
and with his work but begun. But it was some comfort 
to reflect that what of life he had had, he had thoroughly 
enjoj^ed; though he himself, no doubt, would nobly 
have preferred a less happy life, if with corrected views, 
and a finished work. For there is no great soul but will 
confess that its own mere individual unhappiness is more 
than compensated if it but results in work that largely 
advances the happiness of others. This is what ' glorying 
in the cross ' should be felt to mean. For in this there 
is a noble truth. And the only unmitigatedly miserable 
death is that which ends a life at once unhappy, and 
sterile in its unhappiness. 

At length we rose, and — after our long rest under 
the great oak, and overlooking from the base of Anti- 
Lebanon the great plain of Casle-Syria — remounted, and 
rode on our way. That evening we encamped near a 
station of the French road-makers, and on the grassy 
level of an upland vale. After dinner, there was some 
pleasant excitement in the lassooing of a runaway Arab 
stallion. It was a fine game, well played on both sides. 
But Mr. Buckle was again over-fatigued, and could but 
little enjoy it. 

Next morning, however, we were again in our 
saddles by half-past seven o'clock — Mr. Buckle with 



448 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



his last day's journey before him. After a mountain 
ride of three hours and a half we reached the village 
of Dimas. But though the hostelry here is uninviting 
enough, perched as the village is on a bare, white slope, 
utterly devoid of verdure either of foliage or of grass, 
Mr. Buckle was so fatigued as to care only for rest and 
shade. Nor, exhausted though he was, could he 
now fancy anything to eat, many as were my sugges- 
tions from my old hospital experience. But at last, 
when I beat-up for him some yolks of eggs with 
brandy, he took it, relished it, and seemed greatly 
recruited. 

We did not leave Dimas till two o'clock, and then 
we had to cross part of the desolate plateau of the desert 
Sah'ra. Mr. Buckle, unable to sit on his horse, dismoun- 
ted and traversed it on foot, leaning heavily on my arm. 
6 The earth under us was iron,' and, in the blinding glare, 
e the heaven over our heads was brass.' Not a village, 
nor green field, nor tree was to be seen in a sweep of 
100 square miles. And encircling this great desert- 
plateau were the long, steep slopes of mountains, 
equally desolate, and devoid of beauty, save that, at the 
south-western corner,the ever-beautiful Hermon towered 
up, with its snow-capped cone. 

But we descended, at length, into an exquisitely rich, 
many-watered glen — nor relatively only so, after the 
desert we had been traversing, but absolutely. Such 
supreme contrasts of unbreathing desolation, and the 
most variously and intensely breathing life, are only to 
be found in the East. Fording the veins of all this 
exuberant life, and riding up beneath overarching 



Chap. II. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 449 

trees, we gained a little roadside cafe by a fountain, and 
there rested. It was quite open, and simple enough ; 
but there was a hospitable shade, and a place to spread 
our carpets. Past Mr. Buckle, lying there, worn with 
fatigue, and soothing over-excited nerves with the 
grateful fumes of a chibouque, rode a numerous Turkish 
hunting party, with greyhounds and falcons. And as, 
one after another, the long cavalcade reined their horses 
at the fountain under the trees, you could look from a 
mind- worn body to wiry vigour and glowing health. 

To the road again, and down to the green -rushing 
8 Barada ; ' the 8 Bardines ' or 8 Chrysorrhoas,' 8 golden- 
flowing river ' of the Greeks ; the 8 Abana,' or 8 Phar- 
phar,' of the Hebrews ; the 8 Eiver of Damascus.' As 
I was riding on, a little in advance, by this winding 
deep-channelled stream, here like a very torrent of life 
— so luxuriant is the vegetation on its banks, so desolate 
all in the distance — I heard a cry behind me, and, 
turning round, saw Mr. Buckle clinging to the neck of 
his horse. A stirrup had suddenly given way, and he 
had been almost thrown. The effect of this on nerves 
so overworn by excitement as his now were can easily 
be imagined. And, as I assisted him from his horse, he 
said, 8 a sweat of terror had burst over him.' He lay 
down by the wildly rushing stream, and I gave him 
some water from it to drink. It was very sad to see so 
bold a mind with a body that had so miserably fallen 
away from it. It was like the torrent by which he lay, 
losing itself, all stagnant, on a dead level. 

On again. Soon we cross the river by a good 
bridge, and then, after winding through gardens, and 

G G 



450 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



beneath, the grateful shade of walnut-trees, we zigzag 
up a naked and rugged hillside. Slow was our progress. 
For Mr. Buckle could now only just support himself in 
the saddle. At length, riding wearily along, we entered 
a narrow winding rocky defile. To a ruined chapel this 
brings us, on the very edge of the rocky crest of the 
eastern ridge of Anti-Lebanon. And suddenly here, 
there bursts on us a wondrous scene. 

Below us, at the foot of the barren mountains, 
stretched, far as the eye, in the clear Eastern air, could 
see, a vast desert. But in its centre was a long strip, 
wide towards the north, and narrowing southwards, of 
the most gloriously rich vegetation. Amid the deep 
green foliage was a confused mass of white terraced 
roofs. Over these rose countless swelling domes and 
tapering minarets, glittering, here and there, like dia- 
monds set with emeralds. And outside this Paradise- 
city, and between it and the desert, lay a wide and 
beautiful meadow, in the midst of which gleamed a 
winding stream. 

Neither of us could, for some moments, utter a 
word, entranced by the beautiful vision. And it was 
not, indeed, till a considerable time afterwards, and 
when standing with Mr. Buckle's great master, Mr. John 
Stuart Mill, near the base of the Asian Olympus, over- 
looking the Plain of Broussa, that I understood why the 
view of the Plain of Damascus had so much affected 
us. Gazing from that ancient Turkish capital, (with 
which the Turks may again have to be content,) gazing 
thence on a wide mountain-circled plain of unsurpassed 
wealth and beauty, all green and golden, with trees and 



Chap. II. VALLEY OF THE SHADOW OF DEATH. 451 



corn, and sparkling with volcanic springs and winding 
streams ; and finding myself less affected there than I 
had been when beholding the Syrian Paradise ; I saw 
that — something, though, no doubt, its historic memories 
may have had to do with it — yet it was chiefly in the 
physical contrasts presented by the latter that lay the 
secret of its magical power. For such contrasts as 
those of this peopled Island of the Desert, the Oasis of 
Damascus, have innumerable subtle associations. Life, 
in a thousand ways — yet all, on the lightning currents 
of thought, too swiftly glancing for articulate expres- 
sion — seemed, by such an Island-oasis, symboled. Mr. 
Buckle was the first to speak. Forgetting, or rather 
rising above all the toil, fatigue, and pain of his jour- 
ney, yet unrecking of the grave he was to find here, he 
exclaimed — e It is worth all it has cost me to reach it ! ' 

But on again ; and it was now so late that we were 
in considerable anxiety lest we should find the gates of 
the city closed. So we descended the barren mountain- 
side, and rode across what of the Desert lay between 
us and roads under overarching trees, dank with the 
dews of evening. Never, it seemed to Mr. Buckle, 
should we reach the gates. At length, our horses' feet 
clattered on a stone-paved road, and, at length, we 
entered the gates of Damascus. But the reality 
afforded no such fresh excitement to support Mr. 
Buckle as the distant view. Night had fallen. The 
streets were dark, narrow, winding, ill-paved, infested 
with surly dogs, and absolutely interminable. Sinking 
with fatigue, Mr. Buckle had to dismount and walk, 
supported by my arm. Interminable, dark, winding 

(i G 2 



452 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Past V. 



streets, without interest. For the Oriental scenes, re- 
vealed by the occasional lights, were, in general, but an 
irritating contrast of unbought repose. At last we 
came to a little cloor in the side of a dark and little- 
promising house. We might have been inclined to 
object to being taken to such an hostelry as this. But 
now, anywhere for rest and food. 

So we descended some steps into a small and dark 
court ; crossing it, we were led along a dark, winding, 
narrow passage ; and then a scene burst upon us, the 
very realisation of a dream of the East. It was a great 
quadrangle, paved with coloured marble ; in the midst 
of it fountains sparkled and fell, overhung by orange, 
and other odoriferous trees ; and, above all, was the 
blue dome of the Universe and its lighted worlds. At 
the further end of the quadrangle was a deep and lofty- 
vaulted alcove, bright with rich colours ; a luxurious 
divan round its three sides ; on its raised floor a long 
table covered with viands; and on the tables lamps 
that shone on the faces of friends we had seen last in 
the shadow of Mount Sinai. The scene had a fitly 
magical effect on Mr. Buckle. And, after having been 
conducted up an open staircase to one of the lower 
roofs, and thence to an open gallery, into which opened 
the large and beautiful rooms reserved for us, and there 
having washed and dressed, he descended to dinner in 
the alcove, and was able to converse with our friends. 
How exquisite the chibouque on the divan after dinner, 
in such a scene, after such a day, and such a journey — 
across the Valley of the Shadow of Death ! 



453 



CHAPTEE III. 

THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 

Next day, Monday, Mr. Buckle had so surprisingly 
recovered from his fatigue as to sally forth immediately 
after breakfast, on sight-seeing bent. Hours before 
then, however, I had been out for a Turkish bath, 
which I found the best I had yet had in the East. Nor 
did I rest till I had had one rapid glance, at least, at 
all that is of chief interest in the 4 Earthly Paradise ' — 
its bazaars, and various quarters, Mohammedan, Jewish, 
and Christian ; its mosques, palace, and castle, and 
walls ; and, above all, its cafes, overhung by trees, and 
themselves overhanging rushing waters ; its famous 
meadow, where troops were being drilled ; and its 
gloriously wild gardens. Great was the heat, though 
it was still but May, and the plain of Damascus is 
2,200 feet above the sea. But the body relieved itself 
by one or two rushes of blood from the nose ; and so, 
without harm, thought was stimulated to its swiftest 
and most discursive flight ; and the soul was, for the 
most part, wrapped in a magical entrancement. 

For, wandering during that week, about this city of 
the Desert, and through its Oasis-gardens, everywhere 
I was burdened with the idea of that Oneness of Man- 
kind, the realisation of which will make, at length, of the 



454 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



whole Earth a Paradise, such as that of Damascus can 
at best but suggest. It was, in its historic aspect, that 
the idea of Humanity had presented itself to me on the 
Temple-roof at Karnak. Here, the Oneness of Mankind 
was revealed, not so much in the historic continuity of 
the Past, as in the harmonious co-existence of the Future. 
True, the idea of Humanity could not but be here 
brought home to one in its historic aspect by the 
memories of this, the most ancient city of the Earth, 
twice the capital of great Empires, and, in the course 
of the long ages of its existence, possessed in turn, for 
periods of many centuries each, by Syrians, Babylo- 
nians, Persians, Greeks, Eomans, Saracens, and Turks. 
But it was rather in its ideal aspect, in its aspect as 
final result, rather than as historic sequence, that the 
thought of the Oneness of Mankind, the conception of 
Humanity, was ever present with me at the Earthly 
Paradise. And more particularly it was the greetings 
of the innumerable nationalities in its throngs of 
human life ; the various and co-operating industries 
in its public workshops and bazaars ; the splendour 
of its houses, built round marble courts, cooled with 
sparkling fountains, and perfumed with odoriferous 
trees ; the wild beauty of its many-streamed gardens, 
and labyrinthine groves, and the encompassing Desert 
giving to it all an ensphering grandeur and mystery, 
that seemed to me prophetic voices of what Human 
Existence would yet become on this little Isle of Con- 
sciousness amid the Infinite. Voices they were pro- 
phetic of the realisation of that Ideal whitherward 
would seem to tend all the historic forces of Humanity : 



Chap. III. 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE, 



455 



that Ideal which may be defined as completeness of 
truth in Thought, and of love in Conduct ; the intellec- 
tual oneness of Man with Nature, and consequent moral 
oneness of men with each other ; the oneness of Man 
with Nature in truth of Thought, and of men with each 
other in the motives and results of Conduct. 

But the solitary ruins of the Christian quarter, 
devastated by the fanaticism of ignorance and super- 
stition, Muslim and Christian, — for the one provoked 
the other, — fitly reminded how far we yet are from even 
a distant approach to such an Ideal. How is it, then, to 
be, at least, worked towards ? Chiefly, without question, 
by the presenting of that New Ideal to the intellect as 
but an expression of the certain outcome of the ten- 
dencies of the forces of human development ; and by 
so presenting it as to stir the heart with a passionate 
s}mipathy that will urge each individual to make his 
own life aid in the realisation of this Social Ideal. Is 
this possible ? Yes ; if, at least, an Ultimate Law of 
History is discoverable. For it is such a Law, and 
such a Law only, that can afford, at once, the only 
sufficient basis of such a New Ideal, and the only 
effective means of drawing out a truly moral sympathy 
with human misery, and with human progress. And 
why thus, and thus only ? Because it is only a verifiable 
Law of History that can adequately assure ns that such 
an Ideal is no mere delusive vision, but foresight of an 
actual Future revealed in an actual Past ; and because, 
seeing that an Ultimate, is distinguished from an Em- 
pirical, Law of History just by this, that it is but an 
expression of the action, under certain conditions, of 



456 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Px^ET V. 



those Moral Forces, those Internal Wants and Activities 
of which each one is conscious in himself — only thus 
can the fact of Progress, and the Law of it, be not only 
shown to the intellect, but brought home to the heart. 

And the more this question of Moral Forces is con- 
sidered, the more dear it becomes that an Ideal based 
on a Law of History, in which these Forces are duly 
recognised and defined, will, in its most essential con- 
ception, be opposed to that which is at the core of all 
those Ideals of Superstition which have united, only in 
disuniting, men. For a Law, in which Moral Forces 
are duly recognised and defined, will be found to be 
a Law in which all the causes of things are conceived 
as in the System itself of Things. The identification 
of Moral Forces with Moral Maxims, as apparently by 
Mr. Buckle, is but a result of hasty and confused 
thinking. Moral Forces are more truly to be regarded, 
quite generally as Internal Forces, or that Element on 
which External Conditions act, and which on these re- 
acts. But the conception of Causation which is thus 
found to be implied in the true general conception of 
Moral Forces is in the most definite antagonism to 
that which is at the core, not only of Superstitions 
generally, but at the core more particularly of Chris- 
tianism and Islamism. For the conception of Causa- 
tion to which a true general conception of Moral 
Forces leads, is the conception of it as a Mutual Deter- 
mination. And that conception of Causation which is 
at the heart of all superstitions, and in fact defines 
them as Superstitions, is the conception of it as a One- 
sided Determination. 



Chap. HI. THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 457 



But if an Ideal based on a Law of History in which 
Moral, or, generally, Internal Forces are duly recognised 
and defined, is thus, in its most essential conception, 
opposed to that which is at the core of all the Ideals of 
Superstition ; and if these, in uniting, have also ever 
disunited, men ; then, in the very fact of the New Ideal 
having such an opposed conception at the heart of it, 
we have a further assurance of its realisation in a more 
complete Oneness of Mankind than that accomplished 
by any of these other Ideals. Buddhism, Christianism, 
and Islamism, for instance, present ideals of Oneness 
and ideals of a very high moral character ; and it is by 
these ideals that they have achieved whatever has been 
most beneficent in their effects. But, in each and all 
of these three great moral religions, the ideal of Oneness 
is not only rather individual than social, but is presented 
in such an intellectual form of dogma as — derived as, 
in the two latter cases particularly it is, from a conception 
of Causation opposed to that of Science — has demon- 
strably limited the universality of its realisation. Thus, 
not in what is an accident of, but in what is most 
essential to, the ideals of Buddhism, Christianism, and 
Islamism, and their presentation, there is an element 
counteracting and limiting the realisation of them in 
the Oneness of Mankind. JSTo such element, however, 
is there to be found in an ideal of Oneness, not indi- 
vidual only, but social, and an ideal which is based on 
an Ultimate Law of History — no such counteracting 
and limiting element, but the reverse. For it is evident 
that an ideal of Social Oneness which is based on a Law 
of universal History, and on a Law in which progress 



458 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



is shown to arise from the forces of Human Nature 
itself, under the historical conditions of their action, 
not only presents Mankind as united in the Future, but 
as, in so far as each race, nation, and religion has 
contributed to the great progress, united, as mutually 
helpful brethren, in the Past, And such an Ideal, 
therefore, can be presented to all, and especially to the 
adherents of those three great moral religions of the 
Modern Age — Buddhism, Christianism, and Islamism — 
as but a development of ideals already cherished by 
themselves ; and a development due, neither to any 
supernatural inspiration, nor exclusive endowment of a 
4 peculiar people ; ' but to that greater completeness of 
view which has arisen from the varied experiences, 
sufferings, and aspirations of others, their brethren. 

Such a New Ideal will be, in effect, a New Keligion. 
Most fitly, perhaps, we may name it Humanitarianism. 
Destined to replace alike Buddhism, Christianism, and 
Islamism, and to be the religion of a New Age of 
Civilisation ; it will, no doubt, in the course of its 
spread and development, be broken up into at least as 
many sects as each one of these its antecedents. Nor 
is this natural only, but desirable. Too infinite is the 
Universe, and too diverse the capacities of Human 
Consciousness, for a rigid definition of the Ideal. Yet, 
various as will, doubtless, be its special forms, certain 
general principles and outlines will always remain 
distinguishable. Humanitarianism, however various its 
forms, will still be distinguishable from all previous, and 
less universal, religions by its Theory of the Universe, 
the Sanction it gives to Morality, and its Principle of 



Chap. III. 



TJTE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



459 



Authority. Its Theory of the Universe will be an 
expression of the conception of Law in its fullest and 
most complete development. The Sanction given by 
it to Morality will be the Progress of Humanity, brought 
home at once to intellectual apprehension and sympa- 
thetic emotion by an Ultimate Law of History. And 
its Principle of Authority will be the verified Laws of 
Nature, and of Man's progressive Consciousness of 
Nature. Such are the great outlines of that New 
Eeligion which, throughout all the civilised states of the 
world, not of the West only, but of the East, is rapidly 
maturing itself in the truer thought and higher emotion 
of the professed adherents of each and all of the greater 
religions. For these are all still religions of Super- 
naturalism ; and this New Eeligion is, against each and 
all of these, a revolt. Utterly, therefore, do those mis- 
calculate the force of this vast and world-wide move- 
ment, who fancy that Humanitarianism means but the 
Comtean 6 worship of Humanity,' and flatter themselves 
that, in some petty ridicule of the forms of that worship, 
they have disposed of that religion of Humanitarianism 
destined to be the religion of Humanity. Comtism is 
but a sect of Humanitarianism ; a sect to which I do 
not belong ; but a sect against which it does not behove 
any true Humanitarian, (however averse he may per- 
sonally be to the distinctive principles and practices of 
Comtism), to say anything publicly in these times in 
which Humanitarianism itself is, even in its largest 
principles, still a militant Faith. 

And necessary is such a Faith, such a New Ideal 
as the means of any further true union of mankind. 



460 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



For, great as lias been the work of union accomplished 
by Buddhism, Christianism, and Islamism, each has 
evidently shown the utmost of its power for good ; nor 
has any one of them proved capable of making converts, 
save now and then of single and singular individuals, 
from either of the others. And great as are, and still 
greater as will certainly be, the effects of material 
causes — conquest, means of intercommunication, and 
commerce — in contributing to a more universal oneness 
of Mankind than even any one of these three greatest 
religions has accomplished ; yet, true oneness being 
possible only in and through the Ideal, entirely in- 
sufficient by themselves are these material causes ; and, 
only mated with such an Ideal as has its guarantee in 
an Ultimate Law of History, and presents itself as 
carrying on the work of each one of all these three 
great moral religions, will material causes have any real 
fruitfulness in Social Oneness. 

Nor surely can it but be evident that an Ideal 
founded on a Law of History will tend to bind men 
together in the Past, in the Present, and in the Future, 
in a way, to an extent, and in a degree, never pre- 
viously known. In the consciousness it gives, not only 
of historic relations, but of diverse organic functions, 
such an Ideal should, in the judgment both of one's own 
work and capacities, and of the work and capacities of 
others, be found corrective, at least, of that partiality, 
and that prejudice, that self-conceit, and depreciation of 
others, which so miserably as yet disunite men. In the 
consciousness it gives of Man's sublime, but unaided and 
tragic struggle for Knowledge ; hence the Kingship of 



Chap. III. 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



4G1 



Nature ; and hence, that Freewill which, in the enslave- 
ment of his present ignorance, he has not as yet, and can, 
only through Knowledge, attain ; — in the conscious- 
ness it gives of this sublime, but unaided and tragic 
struggle, such an Ideal should certainly enlarge men's 
sympathies with each other, deepen pity, and increase 
the mutuality of forbearance, kindness, and forgiving- 
ness. And in the consciousness it gives both of the 
relativity of human knowledge, and the iimiteclness of 
individual capacity, such an Ideal — an Ideal as it dis- 
tinctively is of solidarity, — should give pride and joy 
in the acknowledgment of all indebtedness that con- 
nects one's own course in the great Torch-race with 
the courses run, and lights held by others. In the indi- 
vidualist religions of Buddhism, Christianism, and Is- 
lamism, perfection has been conceived as attainable by 
the individual ; in the socialist religion of Humani- 
tarianism, it will be conceived as attainable only by 
Humanity, through the efforts of its members in their 
infinitely diverse spheres. 

But what as to God and Immortality in this New 
Ideal ? I will here but point-out that, by no means 
necessarily destitute, as may be supposed, of an objec- 
tive verification, are these conceptions, even if it should 
be found that the Scriptures, in their accordance with 
which the verification of these conceptions has hitherto 
consisted, are not such a Supernatural Eev elation as fit 
them to be an objective Standard of Faith. For, if 
there should chance to be such a fact as, for instance, 
an historical change in the most fundamental of men's 
conceptions, that, namely, of Causation ; then, in the 



462 



riL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



Law of such a change, no less than in a supposed 
Supernatural Bevelation, we should have a definite 
objective fact with which to compare, and by their 
accordance witli which to judge and to verify, all 
other conceptions ; and, as incapable of any other veri- 
fication, those, more particularly, of Immortality and 
of God. To the philosophic student of History, Im- 
mortality and God are simply, in the first place, the 
names of certain human conceptions, of which it is his 
business to distinguish the forms, discover the origin, 
and trace the development. But the immediate and 
direct connection of these conceptions with the most 
fundamental of all, that of Causation, is evident. And 
hence it must be also evident that, if the most general 
fact of human history — the fact that manifests itself in 
the greatest diversity of modes — is a change in the 
form of this conception of Causation ; and if this 
change demonstrably arises from wider knowledge of, 
and profounder reflection on, the facts of existence ; 
then, in their accordance with what a Law of History 
may show to be the true and final form of that most 
general and all-pervading conception, with which they 
are so immediately and directly connected, will the 
forms even of our conceptions of Immortality and of 
God have an objective verification. 

And with the possibility of such a verification in 
view, no one, who has any genuine sense of, and earnest 
craving for, truth, will care to give expression to 
thoughts which, on these subjects, can be but mere 
arbitrary subjective opinions, till their accordance can 
be shown with what a Law of History may, in, at least, 



Chap. III. 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



463 



general outlines, indicate as the ultimate result of the 
development of Human Thought. In one thing, at all 
events, the discipline of Science and the discipline of 
Eomanism agree — in giving a profound contempt for 
the mere arbitrary subjective notion of the individual 
who prides himself on his Protestant's right of form- 
ing an opinion, and sees nothing of the necessity of its 
being in accordance with some objective standard if it 
is to have any worth. For, equally with Eomanism, 
Science has an authoritative objective standard — 
Nature, and man's progressive consciousness of Nature. 
It is the stages of this progressive consciousness that 
an Ultimate Law of History defines. Hence the in- 
commensurable importance of such a Law. It is like 
the Tradition of the Church in the interpretation of 
the Bible. The Bible and Tradition complete each 
other as an objective standard of opinion. And in a 
similar relation to each other are Nature and a Law of 
History. Together they form the New Principle of 
Authority. 

To return to Mr. Buckle. Notwithstanding his re- 
markable recovery apparently from the fatigue of the 
journey to Damascus, and his eager sallying forth the 
morning after our arrival to see all its sights, there was 
a painful scene in the evening of that day. Feeling 
too ill to sit at the table d'hote, where a gay party of 
Austrian nobles had taken the place of our friends 
w r ho had left that morning, Mr. .Buckle had brought to 
him, on the divan behind, what food he could eat. Sud- 
denly I heard a cry from him, and springing up, saw 
him wild and delirious-looking ; and when I went up to 



464 



RIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet. V. 



him he said, £ Oh ! I am going mad ! ' I half- carried him 
upstairs to the little open gallery before his room-door, 
and there set him on a chair. In bringing him upstairs, 
I had. ordered one of our servants to go immediately for 
the French doctor whom Mr. Buckle had seen in the 
morning. His incoherent utterances were most painful 
to listen to ; at one moment saying, ' how nice, very 
nice,' was the iced orangeade I had brought him, and 
thanking me, then telling me to go away ; in the midst 
of all exclaiming, fi Oh, my book, my book ! I shall 
ji ever finish my book!' and, after running on quite 
incoherently, crying, 6 1 know I am talking nonsense, 
but I cannot help it,' and bursting into tears. 

When the doctor arrived, it appeared that he 
had given Mr. Buckle a dose of opium. Mr. Buckle, 
on his recovery, attributed to this the temporary 
delirium. But certainly Mr. Buckle's constitution 
was, in its nervous sensibility, so very peculiar, that 
a physician might be readily excused if he chanced 
to err in his first prescription. 

Next day, however, Mr. Buckle was again better. 
And the next, Wednesday, before making final arrange- 
ments for my departure for Baalbec, I called on the 
doctor privately, and begged him to tell me candidly 
what he thought of the state of Mr. Buckle. He 
assured me that there was no danger ; said he should 
advise Mr. Buckle to return to Beyrout by the shortest 
road ; told me that, from his connection with the French 
Government, he should be able to procure the easiest 
possible means of conveyance ; protested against my 
proposal to give up my projected, and indeed contracted 



Chap. III. THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



465 



for, tour in the Lebanon, as entirely unnecessary ; and 
expressed little doubt but that, on my return to Beirut, 
I should find my friend quite recruited by a week of its 
bracing sea-breezes. I saw also the British Consul, and 
American Missionary, and could feel assured of their 
kind attention during the few days the doctor said it 
might still be necessary for Mr. Buckle to remain at 
Damascus. 

On the afternoon of May 22, I bade adieu to Mr. 
Buckle, who expressed himself as feeling better ; but, 
in case of a relapse, I left him all that remained of those 
medicines of my own which I had had from the pre- 
scriptions of a London physician. I had stayed to the 
very last day which would enable me to rejoin Mr. 
Buckle at Beirut, in time for the steamer by which it 
was proposed that we should leave for Smyrna and 
Athens. Little did I imagine, when bidding him adieu, 
that I should never see him again. But riding through 
the long winding streets towards the gates, suddenly 
there fell on me a strange presentiment of evil. I con- 
sidered whether it would be possible still to turn back 
and remain with him. But, not to speak of the con- 
tract which I should have to forfeit, my baggage 
and servants, except the dragoman with me, were a 
day's march ahead, where I was to meet them that 
evening ; an escort of a couple of Irregular Cavalry had 
been specially granted me by the Pasha ; and, if I 
turned back, no reason could be given for such a change 
of plan but a 4 strange presentiment.' It seemed also 
that I could still effect the chief purpose I should have 
had in view hi turning back. So, at a little roadside 

H H 



466 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



cafe, outside the gates, I dismounted, wrote and de- 
spatched a messenger with a note urging Mr. Buckle, even 
if the diarrhoea were but partially stopped by the 
medicines I had left with him, to get out as soon as 
possible of the stifling air of Damascus, and down to 
the sea. 

Eemounting, I rode on. And no less full of social 
adventure, than of historical and philosophical interest, 
were the next ten days in the Lebanon. But for my 
promise, indeed, to rejoin Mr. Buckle at Beirut, and 
thence proceed with him to Greece, I should have 
yielded to an exceedingly strong temptation to make an, 
at least, temporary home of a certain little mountain- 
village, quite out of the usual route of travellers, and 
where the hospitality offered was of the most charming 
kind. There was, however, alas ! had I but known it, 
no cause for my hastening on. Better though he had 
expressed himself as feeling, when I left, that very 
evening Mr. Buckle was struck down by the fatal fever. 
Adventureful, therefore, as was this Lebanon-journey, 
most unbecoming I should feel it to continue this per- 
sonal narrative while the fellow-traveller, to whom it 
must owe its chief personal interest, is lying on his death- 
bed. And so, reader, we shall turn back to Damascus. 

Already, before my note reached Mr. Buckle, the 
fever was on him. And though he rose the next day, 
and gave orders for instant departure, he had no sooner 
done so than he fell down exhausted. He was attended 
by the French physician ; had, as sick-nurse, the English 
maid of Lady Ellenborough ; and was constantly 
visited by Mr. Sandwith, then H.B.M. Acting-Consul at 
Damascus, and the Eev. Mr. Eobson, the American 



Chap. III. 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



4G7 



missionary. The American physician at Beirut, Dr. 
Barclay, was also summoned ; but, on his arrival on 
the 26th, he found Mr. Buckle already in a state of 
coma, Under the stimulants then applied, he rallied 
sufficiently to recognise the two boys ; and his last act 
was to beckon them to him, and murmur words of 
kindness. But again he relapsed into insensibility, from 
which he never recovered. And on the forenoon of the 
29th he quietly expired. On the afternoon of the 
same day, — as the sun was setting over the mountain- 
ridge from which, but ten days before, he, so intensely 
enjoying life, and desirous of it, had, with such delight, 
gazed on the paradise that was to be his grave, — he was 
carried through the ruins of the Christian quarter, and 
outside the walls, to the Protestant cemetery, and there, 
— amid the trees uptorn, and tombstones broken in 
pieces, during the late outburst of Muslim fanaticism, 
which had not contented itself with massacring the liv- 
ing, but had thus insulted also the dead, — he, tolerant 
of everything but intolerance, was interred. 

Surely, in such a death, and in such an entomb- 
ment, there was even a more than usual completeness 
in the so customary irony of events. JSTor can we see 
in the Kev. Smylie Eobson's reading of the English 
Burial Service as they drew near the grave with the 
coffined body, and lowered it into the pit, but a more 
cutting, though subtler, irony. An avowed Deist, the 
chief source of the enthusiasm which had urged Mr. 
Buckle to that excess of work which his premature deatli 
is really to be attributed to, was the hope that this 
work of his might contribute something to the sub- 



468 



PIZ GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt V. 



version and clearing away of what he regarded as the 
superstitions of Christianity. And, repeating all its 
beliefs with respect to believers over the dead body of 
him, the known unbeliever, — Christianity buried him. 

Our first conversation, the discussion in which Mr. 
Buckle and I first became personally acquainted with 
each other's views, at Syene, the Gate of Ethiopia, was, 
it may be remembered, on so-called ' Spiritualism.' 
A nobler kind of Spiritualism, however, is here revealed 
to us, returning from his grave at Damascus; the 
Humanitarian Spiritualism in which the soul of the de- 
parted is conceived as existing, not as a disembodied 
ghost, but as a living influence ; a Spiritualism which 
makes it the pride and joy of survivors to acknow- 
ledge, to the fullest extent, their indebtedness to, and 
to carry on the work of, the departed. 

The written word remains long after the writer; 

The writer is resting under the earth, but his works endure. 

Such is the translation of the ancient Arabic couplet, 
advised by the Emir Abd-el-Kader, and written 
by Mohammed the SMte, on the slab of Greek marble 
placed, at length, over the grave of Mr. Buckle in the 
far-distant oasis of Damascus. 1 And these ' Pilgrim- 

1 I was, I believe, myself the first-" to make any inquiry about Mr. 
Buckle's grave. In answer to a letter of mine, Dr. Barclay thus wrote, 
under date Beirut, November 24, 1864 ' I also wrote, at the same time, 
to Mr. Bogers, H.B.M. Consul at Damascus, asking, as you desired, for 
a pencil-sketch of the grave ; and in reply was informed that not even a 
stone or mark of any kind indicated the spot of interment ! Shortly after- 
wards, Mr. B. came on to Beirut, when spoke to him on the subject, 
and showed him your letter.' Towards the close of 1865, Mr. Bogers was 
visited by his sister. And through her zeal it was that, in the autumn 
of 1866, nearly four years and a half after his death, the grave of Mr. 
Buckle was, at length, marked by a simple monument. See Appendix', 
iii. pp. 511-14. 



Chap. III. 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



4G9 



Memories ' may be fitly concluded with some remarks on 
the principles of Mr. Buckle's 4 History of Civilisation,' 
and a brief statement of those very different principles 
of such a History to which we have been, with more 
and more clearness, led, in travel and discussion with 
him in the birth countries of Christianity. 

4 Four leading propositions, according to my view,' 
says Mr. Buckle, 4 are to be deemed the basis of the 
history of Civilisation. They are : 1st. That the pro- 
gress of mankind depends on the success with which 
the laws of phenomena are investigated, and in the 
extent to which a knowledge of these laws is diffused. 
2nd. That before such investigation can begin, a spirit 
of scepticism must arise, which, at first aiding the in- 
vestigation, is afterwards aided by it. 3rd. That the 
discoveries thus made increase the influence of intel- 
lectual truths, and diminish, relatively, not absolutely, 
the influence of moral truths ; moral truths being more 
stationary than intellectual truths, and receiving fewer 
additions. 4th. That the great enemy of this move- 
ment, and therefore the great enemy of Civilisation, is 
the protective spirit ; by which I mean the notion that 
society cannot prosper unless the affairs of life are 
watched over and protected at every turn by the State 
and the Church ; the State teaching men what they are 
to do, and the Church teaching them what they are to 
believe.' 1 To these may be added what he elsewhere 
speaks of as e the basis of Universal History ' or c the 
Philosophy of History.' 2 — 5th. That 4 a great division 

1 History of Civilisation, vol. ii. p. 1. 

2 Ibid. vol. i. p. 138. 



470 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt V. 



is to be recognised between European Civilisation and 
Non-European Civilisation,' because of these two 
facts — that, ' in the Civilisations out of Europe, the 
powers of Nature have been far greater than in 
those in Europe ; and that those powers worked im- 
mense mischief ; one division of them causing an un- 
equal distribution of wealth ; another division of them 
causing an unequal distribution of thought.' ' Such 
are the propositions which I hold to be the most essen- 
tial for a right understanding of History, and which I 
have defended in the only two ways any proposition 
can be defended ; namely, inductively and deductively. 
The inductive defence comprises a collection of historical 
and scientific facts, which suggest and authorise the 
conclusions drawn from them ; while the deductive de- 
fence consists of a verification of these conclusions by 
showing how they explain the history of different 
countries and their various fortunes.' 

Now, on these propositions I would remark that, as 
the basis of such a history of Civilisation as Mr. Buckle 
did, in fact, make them the basis of, namely, a history 
of European Civilisation since the upbreak of the 
Catholico- Feudal System of the Mediaeval Period, they 
may — with the modification of their terms that such a 
limitation of their purpose would require — be accepted 
as true and important. Nor indeed, thus limited in 
aim, and modified in expression, would they probably 
ever have met with any serious questioning. It was 
the pretension that these secondary generalisations, 
rightly applicable only as the more special basis of a 
history of the European Civilisation of the last few 



Chap. III. 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



471 



centuries, might be stated as the basis of the whole 
history of Civilisation, that drew to them notice so 
general, and criticism so justly, as I think, unfavourable. 
For, as distinguished from that literateur criticism which 
has, for its standard, a mere subjective opinion, scientific 
criticism has a verifiable objective standard. Such a 
standard for the criticism of any work with the preten- 
sion of contributing aught to the Philosophy of History 
is, as I have elsewhere shown at some length, 1 given us 
by the facts of the development of that philosophy, and 
particularly by its chief results hitherto — the Laws of 
Comte and of Hegel. But, though Mr. Buckle's funda- 
mental propositions may, with reference to a philosophi- 
cal history of the later centuries of Western Civilisation, 
be regarded as of a certain minor truth and importance ; 
yet, if we judge these propositions by that comparison, 
which Mr. Buckle's enunciation of them challenges, 
with the Laws of Comte and of Hegel, we shall, I 
think, have to conclude that, as Laws of the General 
History of Civilisation, they simply vanish. Here, how- 
ever, I can but refer to the two chief criticisms which 
have appeared of Mr. Buckle's work from the point of 
view respectively of the Comtist 2 and of the Hegelian. 3 
It was the third of Mr. Buckle's above-stated pro- 
positions that chiefly attracted popular criticism. For 
by this proposition, as he elaborately showed in his 
fourth and fifth chapters, he meant to affirm nothing 

1 Fraserh Magazine, April 1873. Mr. Buckles Contribution to the 
Neiv Philosophy of History. 

2 Littre, La Philosophic Positive, t. ii. 

3 Stirling-, North American Review, July 1872. 



472 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



less than the general inefficacy of Moral Forces as 
historical causes. In such a narrower statement of it as 
the above, and limited in its application to the history 
of the later European Civilisation, this proposition 
might be accepted as perhaps true, and not unimpor- 
tant. But, by the pretension to make of it and its 
accompanying secondary generalisations, great primary 
laws, the basis of the whole history of Civilisation, it was 
converted into a gigantic error, supported by an accu- 
mulation of fallacies. Moral Forces are declared to 
have been ' stationary ' because moral Dogmas had 
undoubtedly been so. Great evils, and particularly 
War and Persecution, are shown to have been of late 
diminished, rather by Intellectual, than by Moral Agen- 
cies, and therefore the generalisation is ventured that 
6 the actions of mankind are left to be regulated by the 
total knowledge of which mankind is possessed.' And, 
virtually admitting that Moral Forces are something 
quite different from Moral Formulae, and so giving up 
his own first argument which depends on their identi- 
fication ; the inefficacy of Moral Forces in the case of 
social, though not of individual phenomena, is affirmed 
on the ground of the 4 Law of Averages,' and. without 
even an attempt to show that there are such mutually 
eliminating differences in the historical manifestation of 
such forces as would alone make any argument from 
the Law of Averages truly applicable. 1 Nor, for the 
sake of maintaining his five propositions, and even 
more particularly the third of them, as the, at least, 

1 See more fully, with reference to these fallacies, the above cited 
essay, Eraser s Mayazine, April 1873. 



Chap. III. 



THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



473 



more immediate basis of the history of later European 
Civilisation, was there any need of these elaborate, 
and yet transparent, fallacies. They became necessary 
only in the attempt to give to these propositions a 
universal importance. And as several admissions made 
by Mr. Buckle, in the course of our discussion of these 
principles, lead me to believe that he would have 
abandoned this attempt, greatly it is to be regretted 
that his premature death prevented such a recasting of 
his views as would have brought them into far greater 
accordance, as I venture to think, with the facts of 
human development. 

How it came that Mr. Buckle stated these secondary 
generalisations as propositions of universal validity, what 
we now know of the course of his studies, and of the 
ardour of his character, makes manifest. His design of a 
history of Civilisation was the development of a scheme 
of a history of the Middle Ages, through transitional 
plans of a history of the Sixteenth Century, a history of 
the Eeicm of Elizabeth, and others. 1 His fundamental 

1 'The most interesting passage,' says Miss Taylor, in the "biographi- 
cal notice prefixed to his Miscellaneous and Posthumous Works, 1 in the 
whole of his journal is that in -which he notes this resolution: 
" Saturday, October 15, 1842 . . . . I am determined, from this day, to 
devote all the energies I may have solely to the study of the history and 
literature of the Middle Ages. I am led to adopt this course, not so 
much on account of the interest of the subject, though that is a great 
inducement, but because there ha3 been, comparatively speaking, so 
little known and published upon it ; and ambition whispers to me the 
flattering hope that a prolonged series of industrious efforts, aided by 
talents certainly above mediocrity, may at last meet with success." He 
evidently preferred to use his own original powers of thought on the 
materials that had been amassed by other thinkers; and we may conjec- 
ture that it was this preference, whether conscious or not, that led him 
to transform his early scheme of a history of the Middle Ages into a 



474 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



propositions, therefore, as they are certainly mainly ap- 
plicable only to the explanation, were, we thus see, 
drawn chiefly from the study, of but the later pheno- 
mena of Progress. It would thus have been only sur- 
prising if such comparatively special studies had sug- 
gested propositions of general historical validity. And 
to carry propositions beyond their true scope, so natural 
to all, was inevitable in a man of Mr. Buckle's great 
literary ambition, and love of fame. Yet, even the 
errors and extravagances of genius are fruitful. And 
I would now briefly state that view of the history of 
Civilisation and of the historical action of Moral Forces, 
to which I was so greatly helped by discussion with 
Mr. Buckle of what, I ventured to think, the fallacies 
of his book. 

The question, as has been seen, which naturally 
arose, as the test of the truth of Mr. Buckle's theory 
of the non-effect of Moral Forces as historical Causes, 
was — How, then, is the origin of such a new religion 
as Christianity to be historically explained ? The in- 
vestigation of this question, and of the general problem 
of Moral Forces led me to such a comparative study of 
the history of Civilisation, and more particularly of 
Eeligion, as, in the putting-together of the results of a 
great variety of independent researches, issued in the 
discovery of a great intellectual, moral, and social, but 

design for a history of Civilisation It is in the year 1851 that 

there occurs the first evidence of his having decided on the form his 
" book " was to take. " May 12, 1851.— Went to talk to Petheram about 
publishing my ' History of Civilisation/ which I hope to bring out next 
year." It is not, however, till June 9, 1857, that we find this entry in his 
Journal : " Looked into my Volume I. ; of which the first complete and 
bound copy was sent to me this afternoon." ' 



Chap. III. THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



475 



predominantly moral, Revolution, in all the civilised 
states of the world in the Sixth Century B.C. As illustra- 
tive of the intellectual Revolution of this Century, note the 
origin now of an independent Philosophy, Science, and 
History, and hence, of a Secular as distinguished from a 
Sacred Literature; the collecting, editing, and, for the 
first time, writing-down, in alphabetic and popularly 
understood characters, the Literatures of the preceding 
centuries ; and the origin now of national monotheistic, 
or atheistic, at any rate, antipolytheistic religions. As 
an era of moral revolution this century is distinguished 
by a great change in the spirit of poesy, which is now 
lyric and subjective, rather than epic and objective ; but 
chiefly it is marked by the origin of great new religious 
movements — Confucianism in China, (as also, perhaps, 
Sintoism in Japan) ; Buddhism in India ; the downburst 
from the Highlands of Persia of Zoroastrianism in all 
the revolutionary ardour of world-conquest and idol- 
destruction ; that new Judaism of the Babylonish Cap- 
tivity, which may be named Messiahism ; and an 
incipient disintegration of Olympianism and of Osiri- 
anism ; and yet further, this century is morally dis- 
tinguished by a universal expression of maxims of 
Brotherly Love, and stimulation to, and endeavour to 
attain, inward purity of heart, as well as outward pro- 
priety of conduct. Finally, and as illustrative of the 
social Revolution of this Century, note the drawing 
together of small communities into great states, and, 
through the conquests of Cyrus and Cambyses in Cen- 
tral Asia and the Mediterranean East, the establishment 
of the first World-Empire ; the Buddhistic revolt, in 



476 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



India, against caste, and, not the revolt merely against, 
but the abolition, in Greece and Eome, of the old 
Monarchies, and the first foundation of Eepublics ; 
the compiling also, now for the first time, of Codes, 
and the increasing determination henceforth of the 
relations of men to each other, not by status, but 
by contract. Yet, wonderfully various as are the 
phenomena of this great Eevolution, they may, I 
think, be generalised as all but manifestations of a 
new development of individuality ; and so, therefore, 
as at once caused by, and tending towards, a fuller and 
freer development and expression of the individual ; 
or, in other words, a new development of subjective 
thought, emotion, and will. And yet another general 
remark we may, I think, venture on with respect to 
this Eevolution : — It was distinctively a moral revolu- 
tion ; there now, indeed, began that scientific generalis- 
ing, and hence accumulation of knowledge, on which 
all our Western Science is founded ; but there was, as 
yet, no such popular diffusion of knowledge as could 
act as a general scientific discipline. 

The cause, or rather the causes, of this general but 
distinctively moral Eevolution in each, and of the con- 
temporaneity of its occurrence in all the civilised states 
of the world — a Eevolution which certainly had no 
such antecedent as, according to Mr. Buckle's theory it 
ought to have had — a commensurate accumulation and 
diffusion of knowledge, I shall not here attempt to in- 
dicate. Briefly I would but point-out the bearing of 
the recognition of such a Eevolution on our theory of 
the origin of Christianity ; our view of the history of 



Chap. III. THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



477 



Civilisation ; and our judgment of the possibility of the 
discovery of a general Law of History. As to the first, 
given such a Eevolution, we have these three great 
historical facts given : the termination, by this revolu- 
tion, of an Age of Civilisation distinguished by objective 
Nature- worships of which the central myth, more or less 
developed in them all, was that of a God-man coming 
on earth for the benefit of Mankind, being put to death, 
and rising again to glory ; an immense moral change, 
consisting in a new development of individuality, of con- 
science, and of subjectivity ; and, along with a disinte- 
gration of the old beliefs by this great moral change, 
no such general intellectual progress as to check or dis- 
cipline the activity of the myth-creating imagination. 
From such historical facts we naturally deduce the 
probability of the origin, in the course of the develop- 
ment of this Eevolution, of a religion of which the 
central doctrine shall be, in intellectual form, similar 
to, and only in moral spirit different from, the central 
myth of the ancient Nature-worships. And the special 
facts with respect to the character, the life, and the re- 
lations of the Founder and Apostles of Christianity, 
and likewise with respect to the composition, dates, and 
character of its Eecords, serve as an inductive verifica- 
tion of our general historical deduction of the origin of 
such a religion as we find Christianity to be. Such is 
the new theory of the origin of Christianity which 
arises from the discovery of such a Eevolution as that 
of the Sixth Century B.C. That, only in a great his- 
torical deduction inductively verified, can we have a true 
and complete theory of the origin .of this, or any other 



478 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



great historical phenomenon, will be admitted by every 
scientific thinker. And the reference of the origin of 
Christianity to such a Eevolution as that of the Sixth 
Century B.C. has this further advantage that it leads to 
the study of the history of Christianity in its relation 
to that of each of the other great religious movements 
that owe their origin to that universal Eevolution. 

See next the view of the history of Civilisation 
which presents itself to us when we take our stand in 
the midst of this great Pre-Christian Eevolution. It is 
indeed quite true, as Mr. Buckle pointed out, that 4 the 
system of morals propounded in the JNTew Testament 
contained no maxim which had not been previously 
enunciated,' 1 and that 'nothing is to be found in the 
world which has undergone so little change as those 
great dogmas of which moral systems are composed.' 2 
But these moral maxims and systems, and the moral re- 
ligions with which they are associated, have, like 
everything else, had an origin. And, with reference to 
the general history of Civilisation, the great result of 
the discovery of the universal Eevolution of the Sixth 
Century B.C. is to give to that history a unity, a con- 
tinuity, and a significance hitherto scarcely dreamt of, 
and still less proved. Looking back from this great 
era, we see the growth, culmination, and incipient de- 
cline, during an age of some 5,000 years, of a set of 
civilisations all marked by similar general charac- 
teristics in their intellectual conceptions, religious be- 
liefs, and social organisations. And looking forward 

1 History of Civilisation, vol. i. p. 164, n. 14. 
3 Ibid. p. 163. 



Chaf. III. THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



479 



from this great era, we see an age of but half the 
length, as yet, of the former age, and marked by a series 
of correlative developments initiated by revolutions 
similar in their general characteristics, as they were 
contemporaneous in their different origins, in each one 
of the primitive seats of Civilisation. Such a unity, 
continuity, and significance is the history of Civilisa- 
tion thus seen to have that no one form of it can 
henceforth be scientifically treated except in its rela- 
tions as antecedent, correlate, or consequent of the other 
forms of it. For, even of the American Civilisations — 
unfixed as are, as yet, both the precise chronological and 
ethnological relations of the earlier of them — we can, 
at least, say that the earlier belong to Asiatic, and the 
later to European colonists ; and that, though the 
earlier are probably far from being contemporary with, 
they are similar in character to, and a colonial continu- 
ation of, those of that First Age of which the civilisa- 
tions were, in Asia, broken up by the revolutions of 
the Sixth Century B.C. Nor can we by any means now 
admit that, as affirmed by Mr. Buckle, 6 a great divi- 
sion between European Civilisation and non-European 
Civilisation is the basis of the Philosophy of History/ 
What of truth there is in the ground of the proposition 
will now be expressed by saying that the Civilisations 
prior to the Sixth Century B.C. were chiefly determined 
by the Powers and Aspects of Nature, and those pos- 
terior thereto by the Activities and Myths of Mind. 

And now, thirdly, as to the bearing of this discovery 
on our judgment of the possibility of the far larger 
discovery of a general Law of History. If it is admitted 



480 



P1L GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Pakt V. 



that, in the various great events which constitute the 
Eevolution of the Sixth Century B.C. there is to be 
seen but a various manifestation of a new development 
of individuality, or of subjective thought, emotion, and 
will ; then I think it must be evident that, in such a fact, 
we have not only an encouragement to believe the dis- 
covery of some great general Law of History possible ; 
but, if we consider this fact in relation to those two 
historically distinguishable modes of conceiving Causa- 
tion — the Spiritist or Theological, and the Eelationist, 
or Scientific — we have an indication of what that Law 
is. For what, as the conclusion of our discussions and 
meditations on the shore of the Sea of Coral, was stated 
as required to complete the enunciation of an Ultimate 
Law of History, was the discovery of the process of the 
advance from the earlier and simpler, to the later and 
more complex, conception of Causation. But in such a 
new and general development of individuality and 
subjectivity, and hence differentiation of faculties and 
functions, as we find initiated in the great events of the 
Sixth Century B.C. is there not, at once, suggested the 
character, and discovered the fact, of the process of 
such an advance ? For, if the ultimate conception of 
Causation is truly definable as the conception, not of a 
Sequence arising from a One-sided Determination, but 
of a Sequence arising from a Mutual Determination ; 
then, evidently, the process of working-out this later 
conception of Reciprocity must have been a great his- 
torical movement of Differentiation. JSTo more, there- 
fore, can the vain babblement be listened to that would 
represent the history of Philosophy as that of mere 



Chap. III. THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



481 



rounds of futile speculation. In the antagonisms of 
Materialism and Idealism, as in the larger antagonisms 
of Philosophy and Eeligion, (only to be dated from the 
Sixth Century B.C.), we now see one sublime movement ; 
one vast and varied process of Human Development ; 
a movement having as its glorious, — though, save for a 
few, yet far-distant, — issue, the freeing of the Human 
Consciousness from the superstitions, and consequent 
slaveries, the result of the primitive ignorance, necessi- 
tated by the physical conditions of primitive civilisation, 
and the conquest, at length, for mankind of freedom, 
and realisation of justice, through the gain of that 
foresight given by conceptions in accordance with the 
facts of the Universe, of Life, and of History. 

Such, then, is the theory of the origin of Christianity, 
the view of the general history of Civilisation, and the 
conception of the process of Human Development, 
which arises from the discovery of that great Eevolution 
of the Sixth Century B.C. to which I was led by the 
investigation of that problem of the true conception, 
and historical efficacy, of Moral Forces which was the 
main subject of my discussions with Mr. Buckle. As 
criticism is never complete save when it is not negative 
merely, but opposes to, or complements, the theory 
criticised by the outlines, at least, of some other and truer 
one, the above seemed required, and may suffice as a 
completion of my criticism of the principles of Mr. 
Buckle's History of Civilisation. To the work which 
follows this in order I must here refer the reader who 
may care to have any further exposition of this new 
historical theory. To that work I have ventured to 

I I 



482 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



Part V. 



give the title of In the Morningland. For its aim is 
to give at least a preliminary verification of what I 
conceive to be the Ultimate Law of History. With 
such a verification of that Law I desire to associate 
those Morningland travels and discussions with Mr. 
Buckle, which so greatly contributed to the discovery 
of it. And, as the great result of that Law is — or 
rather as, in its moral aspect, that Law itself is — a 
New Ideal, a New Eeligion ; it has seemed that a 
preliminary verification of it might, for this reason also, 
be not unfitly entitled In the Morningland. 

But of these memories of Oriental pilgrimage I 
must now close the narrative. For as, in beginning it, 
I oveiieapt all the months of my Eastern journey pre- 
vious to my first meeting with Mr. Buckle, so, as I then 
said, I meant to spare the reader all the months of it 
after his lamentable death. And yet one more inefface- 
able memory I may, perhaps, be permitted, before 
finally concluding, to recall. In the course of my 
further wanderings, I met, at Athens, Mr. Buckle's great 
master, John Stuart Mill. It chanced that, afterwards, 
we made an excursion from Constantinople to the Asian 
Olympus, in Bithynia. And it is the conversation 
with Mr. Mill while coming clown the long descent, 
after a night passed in tents just under the snow-line, 
that I desire to conclude these Pilgrim Memories with 
recalling. It was of Human Progress that we talked, 
and of the moral efficacy of that ideal of Humanity 
which is, or would be, the great ethical result of estab- 
lishing an Ultimate Law of History. What Mr. Mill 
then said, with that noble passionate fervour which 



Chap. III. THE EARTHLY PARADISE. 



483 



underlay his calm, and even stiff and cold, exterior, he 
afterwards wrote. 1 Like so many others well ac- 
quainted with the Philosophie Positive of M. Comte, 
I did not then know anything, save by vague and 
erroneous report, of the Politique Positive in which 
this new ideal of Humanity is set forth. What Mr. 
Mill then said came, therefore, to me as a confirmation, 
no less welcome than unexpected, of all that had been 
filling my own mind with enthusiasm during these 
months past of travel in the Morningland. How Mr. 
Mill differed from Comte in the special expression he 
gave to the general principles of Humanitarianism, it 
is unnecessary for me here to say. Nor need I here 
say anything of those special views of his own, with 
which I could then no more agree than now. The 
main thing, and that which made an impression on 
me never-to-be-forgotten, was what he said (and, as 
now I may add, what he showed), of that moral 
effectiveness of the ideal of Humanity, belief in which 
unites all who hold it, (however they may otherwise 
sectarianly differ), as Humanitarians. This had been the 
subject of our talk the previous evening after dinner, 
sitting at the tent-door, by a fountain near the summit 

1 ' Equally irrational and mean is the conception of human nature as 
incapable of giving its love and devoting its existence to any object 
which cannot afford, in exchange, au eternity of personal enjoyment. 
The power which may be acquired over the mind by the idea of the 
general interest of the human race, both as a source of emotion, and as a 
motive to conduct, many have perceived ; but we know not if any before 
M. Comte realised so fully as he has done all the majesty of which that 
idea is capable. It ascends to the unknown recesses of the past, embraces 
the manifold present, and descends into the indefinite and unforeseeable 
future.' — Auguste Comte and Positivism. 



484 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



Paet V. 



of Olympus. And such was again the subject of a 
never-to-be-forgotten conversation, walking or riding 
down the steep and narrow paths through the Forest, 
(on the higher slopes, of pine, and on the lower, of oak 
and of chestnut), and with views, at every opening, over 
the glorious plain of Broussa, with the Sea of Marmora 
gleaming in the distance, a sight comparable only to 
that of the oasis of Damascus — the Earthly Paradise. 



485 



APPENDIX. 

ADDITIONAL PERSONAL DETAILS. 



I. 

MR. BUCKLE'S STUDENT-LIFE AND CHARACTER. 

Extracted from a review by the Author of trie Miscellaneous and Post- 
humous Works of Henry Thomas Buckle, edited with a Biographical 
Notice by Helen Taylor, 3 vols. (Longman & Co.) Athenceum, 
December 21, 1872. 

So much, for criticism. Let us now turn to what will be more 
grateful to ourselves, and more pleasant, no doubt, also to our 
readers, and try to trace some of the lineaments of that life of 
which the editor certainly might have given us a far more 
complete portraiture. We shall not now undertake a general 
review of Mr. Buckle's characteristic theories of historical 
method. For the present, we shall take as our subject the 
materials here given us for a picture of Mr. Buckle as the man, 
rather than those afforded us for a more complete estimate of 
him as a philosopher. And this, not only because the bio- 
graphical notice of Mr. Buckle is here bound up with volumes 
that can, as a whole, have but little interest for the general 
reader, but because the facts of his life and the characteristics of 
his nature are described with a most provoking want of grouping 
and order, and our readers will, we believe, thank us for endea- 
vouring to present them with a sketch, somewhat less disjointed 
and fragmentary, of a life to which no little of tragedy was given 
by a premature death in a far-distant land, and no little of 
romance by what alone gives romance to life — a pure and 
passionate love. 

First, then, we see the feeble and delicate child, having no 
pleasure in the society of other children, but sitting for hours at 
his mother's side to hear the Bible read, and at last stimulated 
to the love of reading for himself by the present she one day 



486 



P1L GRIM-MEMORIES. 



made him of the 'Arabian Nights.' The Bible, the 'Arabian 
Nights,' and the Koran — these are the three great works of 
Semitic literature ; and how incalculable has been their influence 
on the development of the Aryan peoples — of the first particu- 
larly on the Western, and of the third on the Eastern Aryans ! 
His mother had abandoned the Calvinistic views she had once 
held, and abstained from imparting to her boy any form of 
that dogmatic theology often taught with Bible-reading. Yet 
she was herself of a naturally strong religious temperament. 
But when her son in after years differed from her, she was nobly 
content to wait, with a boundless faith in the final triumph of 
truth. Some other facts we note respecting his boyhood. The 
only game he cared for was that of playing at Parson-and- Clerk, 
as he called it, he himself being the preacher. Under the influ- 
ence of his father, he was, in his earlier years, a vehement Tory. 
But young Buckle's first effort at connected thought was on Free 
Trade, the principle of which he seems to have seized as soon as 
it was presented to him ; and his first effort at literary compo- 
sition was a letter to Sir Robert Peel, which, however, he had 
not the courage to post. At eighteen, his father, in spite of his 
mother's remonstrances, and to her great dismay, insisted on his 
entering his counting-house in the City, destining him for the 
same money-making life he had himself led. But three months 
after, on the 24th of January, 1840, his father died, and he was 
left a sufficient fortune to make it unnecessary for him either to 
remain in business or to prepare for a profession. His mother 
and he then went abroad, and travelled for a considerable time 
in France, Italy, and Germany. During this tour, and for some 
time after his return to England, it was to the study of languages 
that he principally devoted himself. Thus passed the childhood, 
boyhood, and youth of Buckle. 

At length, we find the commencement of a Journal which 
marks in the most decided manner his entrance on manhood 
with self-devotion to a great aim : — 

4 Saturday, October 15, 1842. — Being this day settled in my 
new lodgings, No. 1, Norfolk Street, I determined to keep a 
journal of my actions — -principally, for the sake of being able to 
review what I have read, and consequently to estimate my own 
progress. My reading has, unfortunately, been hitherto, though 
extensive, both desultory and irregular. I am, however, deter- 
mined from this day to devote all the energies I may have solely 
to the study of the history and literature of the Middle Ages. I 



APPENDIX. 



487 



am led to adopt this course, not so much, on account of the 
interest of the subject, though that is a great inducement, but 
because there has been, comparatively speaking", so little known 
and published upon it. And ambition whispers ip me the flatter- 
ing hope that a prolonged series of industrious efforts, aided by 
talents certainly above mediocrity, may at last meet with 
success.' 

Thus he signalized his majority ; and in the same year he 
began the practice of writing those copious abstracts which 
constitute his Commonplace-Books, and at which he used to 
work for several hours a day. It was nearly ten years before 
this early scheme of a History of the Middle Ages was trans- 
formed into that of a History of Civilisation. But we think it 
might be shown, that, to the fact of his ' History of Civilisation ' 
having had such an origin, is due some of its most character- 
istic features. Several intermediate plans, however, there seem 
to have been ; and it is here that, in a biography of Mr. Buckle, 
should come those earlier historical sketches which we can assign, 
on more or less certain evidence, to this period of his life, but 
which we find scattered all through these unedited remains. 
Thus, on the 7th of March, 1843, occurs this entry in his Journal : 
' Began my Life of Charles I.' About January, 1850, he wrote 
his account of Hooker and Chillingworth ; and in July of the 
same year we read in his Journal : ' Finished that part of 
Somers's Tracts which relates to my History of Elizabeth.' But 
he had now probably begun to form his design of a History of 
Civilisation ; for, under the date of the 24th of June, 1850, we 
find .— 

'Read Simon's "Animal Chemistry." The more I read of 
this great work, the more delighted I am, particularly at the new 
views it opens to me, and of which Simon seems to have no 
idea, — I mean the connexion between his researches and specula- 
tions and the philosophic history of man.' 

And the year after, we mark this entry : — 

'May 12, 1851. — Went to talk to Petheram about publishing 
my " History of Civilisation," which I hope to bring out next 
year.' 

His plan thus, at length, after ten years' labour and thought, 
matured, and the execution of it probably already begun, the 
next six years — that is to say. from 1851 to 1857 — were devoted 
to writing and rewriting, revising and altering, copying out and 
adding to, his first volume. During these, probably the happiest 



488 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



years of his life, lie lived alone with his mother in London, with 
but occasional short visits to relations, or excursions on the 
Continent. His mode of life and method of work are indicated by 
the following, out of hundreds of similar entries, in his Journal : — 

' Saturday, May 19, 1855 ; 59 Oxford Terrace.— Rose at 8.30. 
Walked half-an-hour, and then breakfasted. From 10.40 to 1.50 
finished the chapter in which I pass from physical laws to inquire 
into metaphysical resources. Walked one hour-and-a-half ; and 
from 5.30 to 7.10 finished " Transactions " of Asiatic Society, iii. 
pp. 138-585. Dined at 7.15. In bed at 10.40, and to 11.40 read 
"Journal Asiatique," i. serie x. 82-335.' 

It is to this period that the recollections of Miss Shirreff, who 
first made his acquaintance in the spring of 1854, more particu- 
larly belong. She thus draws his portrait : — 

' His appearance struck us as remarkable, though he had no 
pretension to good looks. He had fine eyes, and a massive, well- 
shaped head ; but premature baldness made the latter rather 
singular than attractive ; and beyond a look of power, in the 
upper part of the face especially, there was nothing to admire. 
He was tall, but his figure had no elasticity; it denoted the 
languor of the mere student, one who has had no early habit of 
bodily exercise. The same fact could be read in his hand, which 
was well shaped, but had that peculiar stamp that marks one 
trained to wield a pen only.' 

The picture Miss Shirreff gives of his life, and of what con- 
stituted its romance, the mutual sympathy and devoted affection 
of mother and son, is very interesting. Chapter by chapter, 
almost page by page, was the first volume planned with his 
mother, and commented upon by her, and with her every specula- 
tion as it arose was talked over. But, in 1855, Mrs. Buckle was 
taken seriously ill, and, in 1856, she began to fear that she would 
never live to see her son acknowledged as the genius that she 
believed him to be. Earnestly then did she begin to urge him to 
bring at least one volume out. ' Yet, to spare him, she never 
would betray in his presence the real secret of her growing im- 
patience ; only when we were alone,' writes Miss Shirreff, ' she 
would say to me, " Surely God will let me live to see Henry's 
book." ' At length Mr. Buckle makes this note in his 
Diary : — 

'June 9, 1857. — Looked into my Volume L, of which the first 
complete and bound copy was sent to me this afternoon.' 

And he laid it before his mother. But the dedication to herself 



APPENDIX. 



489 



she was quite unprepared for. And so great was her agitation, 
that Mr. Buckle afterwards bitterly repented the somewhat 
thoughtless act of thus laying the volume before her to enjoy her 
surprise and pleasure. 'Even the next day,' says Miss ShirrefF, 
' when showing it to me she could not speak, but pointed, with 
tears, to the few words that summed up to her the full expression 
of his love and gratitude.' 

Very pleasant it is to read of Mr. Buckle's manner towards 
his mother having been marked by ' exquisite tenderness, mixed 
with playful boyish ways.' Gladly and proudly did he at all 
times acknowledge that it was from her that he inherited his taste 
for metaphysical speculation, and that to her it was that he owed 
his love for poetry. It was her presence, too, that seemed to 
bring out all that was best in him. And we cannot, therefore, 
wonder that when, the year after the publication of his first 
volume, he was asked to deliver a lecture at the Royal Institu- 
tion, he chose as his subject 'The Influence of Women on the 
Progress of Knowledge.' But in the following spring, while he 
was occupied in writing his review of Mr. J. S. Mill's work on 
' Liberty,' the long-dreaded blow fell at last. It is thus briefly 
noted in his Diary : — 

' April 1, 1859, at 9.15 p.m. my angel mother died peacefully, 
without pain.' 

That morning he had been occupied in writing his account of 
the Pooley case ; and it was under the immediate impression of 
his loss that he wrote those passages on ' The Evidence of Im- 
mortality supplied by the Affections,' which form a later part of 
his essay on Mill. Soon after, he thus wrote to a friend : — 

' I remain quite well, but my grief increases as association 
after association rises in my mind, and tells me what I have lost. 
One thing alone I cling to, the deep and unutterable conviction 
that the end is not yet come, and that we never really die. But 
it is a separation for half a life ; and the most sanguine view that 
I can take is that I have a probability before me of thirty years 
of fame, of power, and of desolation.' 

Again, in November of the following year (I860), he 
writes : — 

' I see too surely how changed I am in every way, and how 
impossible it will be for me to complete schemes to which I once 
thought myself fully equal. My next volume is far from being 
ready for the press, and when it is ready it will be very inferior 
to what either you or I expected.' 



490 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



It was, however, published in May, 1861. But his health 
then completely giving way, he laid aside — for a time only, as he 
thought, yet in fact, for ever — all literary work, and towards the 
end of October he embarked for Alexandria, setting out in search 
of new life in the East, but on the journey, as we now see, to his 
tomb at Damascus. 

Of this journey of seven or eight months, three or four 
extracts from letters are, in this most unnecessarily meagre and 
unsatisfactory ' Biographical Notice, ' made to serve as account. 

^ ^ ^ ^ ^ 

Let us put together the main lineaments of his character as 
they are incidentally presented to us in the narrative of his 
fellow-traveller, published in 'Eraser's Magazine,' for August, 
1863, and here in the recollections of Miss Shirreff; for the two 
accounts are substantially in perfect accordance. From both we 
gather that, among Mr. Buckle's moral characteristics, there was 
a certain selfishness, love of money, and effeminacy. But Miss 
Shirreff says : — 

' His selfishness was, at any rate, of a rare and high order, 
and might rather be called by a better name ; ... if he loved 
money, he loved knowledge more ; . . . and his health made 
many things important to him which others can easily dispense 
with, and thus gave an appearance of somewhat effeminate ease 
to his daily life.' 

And in a similar strain his fellow-traveller concludes his 
narrative : — 

' In case of the misunderstanding of any of the foregoing 
anecdotes of him, let me say that no serious charge of effeminacy 
or cowardice can be brought against one suffering from such 
physical weakness and nervous exhaustion as Mr. Buckle had 
gone to the East to recover from. . . . And with full remem- 
brance of all, I can still say that it was no selfish nature that 
could be so shaken by the death of another as his had been ; that 
could so passionately cherish the hope of immortality ; that could 
attach itself so much to children ; so care for, and so affection- 
ately write of the friend's sons who had accompanied him in the 
East ; that could be so roused by wrong done to others ; that 
could conceive and devote itself to the accomplishment of so great 
a purpose as writing the "History of Civilisation in England." * 

Both Miss Shirreff and Mr. Buckle's fellow-traveller thus 
agree as to those shades in his character at which they hint, and 
in the considerations which they suggest, to prevent too much 



APPENDIX. 



401 



importance being attached to these less agreeable traits. Only 
on one point do they differ. Miss Shirreff represents Mr. Buckle 
as not only having little love of Art, but being quite without 
feeling for Music, and strangely insensible to the beauties of 
Nature. But in the East, as we gather from his fellow-traveller, 
Mr. Buckle, though still remaining without feeling even for the 
finest church music of the Holy Land, seems to have had aroused 
in him both a love of Art and a sensibility to Nature, which had 
not before distinguished him, except, perhaps, in his first travels 
on the Continent. As to all the larger and nobler characteristics 
of Mr. Buckle's nature, Miss Shirreff and his fellow-traveller are 
again in perfect accord. From the recollections of both he 
appears to have been possessed of great kindliness of disposition, 
admirable temper as well as brilliance in conversation and in dis- 
cussion, great industry, patience, and earnestness ; the readiest 
and most effective sympathy with all seeking to reach or to 
spread knowledge ; and an eager love of fame, sanctified, how- 
ever, by his holding what he believed he had won of truth, to be 
' a call to an apostleship in as true and earnest a sense as ever 
was realized by missionary or philanthropist.' Such was the 
man whose career was prematurely brought to a close while he was 
still but in his forty-first year, by a fever caught at Damascus. 



492 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



II. 

AN AMERICAN'S REMINISCENCES OF MR. BUCKLE 
AT CAIRO. 

Extracted from Personal Reminiscences of the late Henry Thomas 
Buckle.— Atlantic Monthly, April, 1863. 

Cairo, Egypt, February 6, 1862. — I am afraid I repeat myself in 
talking about the beauty of the climate here, but to-day is so 
lovely that I cannot refrain from recurring to the subject. While 
you are shivering under the blasts of winter, we have a genuine 
June morning : the air soft and pure, the atmosphere clear, innu- 
merable birds chirping in the trees opposite the windows, (for 
the Arabs never interfere with birds,) and the aspect of things 
from our balcony overlooking the Esbekieh, or public square, 
as pleasant as one could wish. The beautiful weather, too, is 
constant. 

But I must tell you of my dining yesterday with Mrs. R., to 
meet Mr. Buckle, the author of the 1 History of Civilisation,' who 
has just returned from his two or three months' voyage up 
the Nile, in which he pushed as far as Nubia. He is now staying 
for a little while in Cairo, or rather in his dahabieh, or boat, 
(which he says is more comfortable than any hotel,) moored in 
the river at Boolak, the port of the town. Mrs. R., the daughter 
of Lady Duff Gordon, and granddaughter of Mrs. Austin, is a 
most attractive and accomplished young lady ; her husband is 
the manager in Egypt of the great banking-house of Briggs and 
Company, in which he is a partner. Their usual residence is at 
Alexandria ; but at this season ' all the world ' of Egypt comes 
to Cairo, to enjoy the beautiful weather here, while it is raining 
incessantly in Alexandria, only a hundred and thirty miles distant. 
Mrs. R., in asking Mr. Thayer, our Consul-General, to meet Mr. 
Buckle, with very great kindness included me in the invitation. 
The only other lady present was Miss P., a niece of the late Countess 
of Blessington, herself the author of several pleasant stories, and 
of a poem which gained a prize in competition with one by Mrs. 
Browning and another by Owen Meredith : she is spending the 



APPENDIX. 



493 



winter with Mrs. R. There were also present C, who conducts 
the house of Briggs and Company in Cairo ; 0., another banker ; 
and Hekekyan Bey, an Armenian, a well-read and intelligent 
man, formerly Minister of Public Instruction under Mehemet 
Ali, and still, I believe, in receipt of a pension from the Viceroy's 
Government, in consideration of his public services, which have 
been valuable. 

The dinner was at an hotel called the ' Restaurant d' Auric' We 
assembled in Mrs. R.'s drawing-room, an apartment in the 
banking-house at a little distance, and walked to the hotel. The 
company fell into two groups, each lighted by a swarthy boab or 
lackey carrying a mashal or lantern ; and I happened to walk with 
Mr. Buckle, so that I had a brief talk with him in the street 
before the general conversation began at the table. He remarked 
upon the extraordinary devotion exhibited by Delane of the 
London ' Times ' to the interests and politics of Lord Palmerston. 
Becoming interested in our conversation, we strayed away from 
the rest, and were walking about a quarter of a mile down the 
bazaar, when (are you surprised to hear ?) Mr. Buckle was 
missed, the two boabs came running after us, and we were cited 
to the dinner-table. 

Buckle, of course, was the card. He talked with a velocity 
and fulness of facts that was wonderful. The rest of us could do 
little but listen and ask questions. And yet he did not seem to 
be lecturing us ; the stream of his conversation flowed along easily 
and naturally. Nor was it didactic ; Buckle's range of reading 
has covered everything in elegant literature, as well as the pon- 
derous works whose titles make so formidable a list at the be- 
ginning of his History, and, as he remembers everything he has 
read, he can produce his stores upon the moment for the illus- 
tration of whatever subject happens to come up. 

In the first place, let me say how delightful it was to discover 
his cordial interest in our own country. He expresses a strong 
hope that England will take no part against us, and do nothing 
to break the blockade. He is going to write about America ; 
indeed, his next volume, besides containing a complete view of 
the German philosophy, will treat of the United States. But he 
will visit us before he writes. Although appreciating the great 
work of De Tocqueville, he complains of the general inadequacy 
of European criticism upon America. Gasparin's books, by the 
way, he has not seen. For his own part, he considers the subject 
too vast, he says, and the testimony too conflicting, to permit 



494 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



hiru to write upon it before lie has seen the country ; and mean- 
while he scrupulously refrains from forming any conclusive 
opinions. 

Subject to this reservation of judgment, however, he remarked 
that he was inclined to think that George III. forced us prema- 
turely into a democracy, although the natural tendency of things 
both in America and England was towards it ; and he thought 
that perhaps we had established a political democracy without 
having yet achieved an intellectual democracy : the two ought to 
go hand in hand together. The common people in England, he 
said, are by far the most useful class of society. He had been es- 
pecially pleased by the numerous letters he had received from 
working-men who had read his book. These letters often sur- 
prised him by the acuteness and capacity displayed by their 
writers. The nobility would perish utterly, if it were not con- 
stantly recruited from commoners. Lord Brougham was the 
first member of the secular peerage who continued after his 
elevation to sign his name in full, ' H. Brougham,' which he 
did to show his sympathy with the class from which he sprang. 
Buckle remarked that the history of the peasantry of no Euro- 
pean country has ever been written, or ever can be written, and 
without it the record of the doings of kings and nobles is mere chaff. 
Surnames were not introduced until the eleventh century, and it 
is only since that period that genealogy has become possible. 

Another very pleasant thing is Mr. Buckle's cordial appre- 
ciation of young men. He repeated the story, which I believe is 
in his book, that, when Harvey announced to the world his great 
discovery of the circulation of the blood, among the physicians 
who received it was none above the age of forty. Mr. Thayer 
described to Buckle some of our friends wjio have read his book 
with especial satisfaction. He evidently took pleasure in this 
proof of appreciation, and said that this was the class of readers 
he sought. ' In fact, the young men,' he said, ' are the only 
readers of much value ; it is they who shape the future.' He said 
that Thackeray and Delane had told him he would find Boston 
very like England. He knows but few Bostonians. He had 
corresponded with Theodore Parker, whom he considered a re- 
markable man ; he had preserved but one of his letters, which 
he returned to Mrs. Parker, in answer to her request for materials 
to aid her in preparing the memoir of her late husband. Buckle 
says that he does not generally preserve other than business- 
letters. 



APPENDIX. 



49o 



Mr. Buckle gave an amusing account of the origin of 
the wigs which the lawyers wear in England, and which, by 
the way, struck me as infinitely ludicrous when I saw them 
on the heads of the judges and counsel in Westminster Hall. 
Originally the clergy were forbidden to practise law, and, 
as they were the best lawyers, the wig was worn to conceal the ' 
tonsure. He had anecdotes to tell of Johnson, Lamb, Macaula}-, 
Voltaire, Talleyrand, &c, and quoted passages from Burke and 
from Junius at length in the exact words. Junius he considers 
proved to be Sir Philip Francis. He told a good story against 
Wordsworth, contained in a letter from Lamb to Talfourd, which 
the latter showed to Buckle, but had considered among the 
things too personal to be published. Wordsworth was decrying 
Shakspeare. ' Pooh ! ' he said, ' it is all very easy : I could write 
like Shakspeare myself, if I had a mind to ! ' ' Precisely so,' re- 
joined Lamb, — ' if you had a mind to. 1 

Mr. Buckle does not think much, of the ancient Egyptian 
civilisation, differing in this respect toto coelo from Hekekyan Bey, 
who finds in the monuments proofs of the existence of an ex- 
pansive popular government. Buckle declares that the machines, 
as figured in the hieroglyphics, are of the most primitive kind, — 
and that the learning, by all accounts, was confined to the priests, 
and covered a very narrow range, exhibiting no traces of ac- 
quaintance with the higher useful arts. He says it is a fallacy 
to suppose that savages are bodily superior to civilised men. 
Captain Cook found that his sailors could outwork the islanders. 
I remarked, in confirmation, that our Harvard boat-clubs won the 
prizes in rowing-matches against all comers. Buckle seemed 
interested, and asked for a more particular account, which, of 
course, I took great pleasure in giving. C, like a true English- 
man, doubted the general fact, and said the Thames watermen 
out-rowed their university-clubs. 

For Turkish civilisation Mr. Buckle has not the slightest 
respect, — said he could write the whole of it on the back of his 
hand ; and here Hekekyan Bey cordially agreed with him. 
Buckle is very fond of chess, and can play two games at once - 
blindfold. He inquired . very particularly about a native here 
who it is said can play four or six in this manner, and said he 
should like to try a game with him. He had seen Paulsen, but 
not Morphy. 

Mr. Thayer asked him if in England he had been subjected to 
personal hostility for his opinions, or to anything like social 



496 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



ostracism. He said, generally not. A letter from a clergyman to 
an acquaintance in England, expressing intense antipathy to him, 
although he had never seen the writer, was the only evidence of 
this kind of opposition. ' In fact,' said he, naively, 1 the people 
of England have such an admiration of any kind of intellectual 
splendour that they will forgive for its sake the most objection- 
able doctrines.' He told ns that the portion of his book which 
relates to Spain, although by no means complimentary to that 
country, has been translated and published separately there. 
T. remarked that to this circumstance, no doubt, we may ascribe 
some part of the modern regeneration of Spain, the leading 
statesmen being persuaded to a more liberal policy ; but this 
view Buckle disclaimed with an eagerness seeming to be some- 
thing more than the offspring of modesty. 

After dinner we returned to Mrs. R.'s apartments, where we 
had tea. Buckle and Hekekyan now got into an animated dis- 
cussion upon the ancient Egyptian civilisation, which scarcely 
gave the rest of us a chance to put in a single word. It was, 
however, exceedingly interesting to sit and listen. Indeed, al- 
though there was nothing awful about Buckle, one felt a little 
abashed to intrude his own remarks in such a presence. . . . 
We stayed until nearly midnight, and then, taking our leave, 
Buckle accompanied T. and myself as far as the door of our 
hotel. Buckle received most kindly all suggestions made to him 
of books to be read upon American affairs, and people to be seen 
in the United States. 

February 7. — To-day we made a party to drive to see the 
Howling Dervishes, who howl on Fridays. Friday is sometimes 
called ' the Mahometan Sunday,' which is a correct phrase, if the 
especial celebration of religious services is meant ; but it is not 
at all a day of rest : we found the people continuing their various 
avocations as usual. At the mosque we met Mr. Buckle, a little 
careless in his dress, — in this respect affording a not disagreeable 
contrast to the studied jauntiness which Englishmen are apt to 
affect in their travelling-gear. Nobody is allowed to press the 
floor of the mosque with shoes upon the feet. T. and I, warned 
by our former experience, had brought pieces of cotton cloth to 
tie over our shoes ; and some cloth slippers of a bright orange 
colour, such as the Arabs are fond of using, had been provided, 
which Miss P. slipped directly over her walking-boots. Buckle, 
with careless indifference, pulled off his shoes and walked in in his 
stockinged feet. His figure is tall and slender, although he is a 



APPENDIX. 



497 



large man ; he stoops a little in standing ; his head, well-shaped, 
is partly bald ; and although his features are not striking in 
themselves, they are rendered so by his animated expression. 
The photograph which I have seen is a wretched caricature. 

Driving back, Miss P. helped us to recall some of the inci- 
dents of the dinner of the preceding day. She used to see al- 
most all the distinguished literary characters at the house of her 
aunt ; but she told us that she never met anybody whose conver- 
sation could bear comparison with that of Buckle, excepting Lord 
Brougham and Alexander Dumas. The latter disgusts by his 
insufferable egotism. 

February 10. — Yesterday Mr. Thayer entertained Mr. Buckle 
at dinner. The party included Mrs. R. and some of the guests 
whom we had met at her table. We had hoped also for the pre- 
sence of Mr. R., who was expected to come up from Alexandria; 
but the train failed to bring him. Mr. Thayer also invited Sir 
James Outram, but he is too unwell to come, although express- 
ing himself pleased with the invitation. The landlord of the 
hotel where the Consul- General is staying (' Hotel des Ambassa- 
deurs ') was very proud of the occasion, and the entertainment, 
although simple, was elegant. An oval table was found of ex- 
actly the right size to seat eight. Buckle was in excellent spirits, 
and, as before, was the life of the party. "We had been terribly 
afraid lest he and Hekekyan should get into another long dispu- 
tation, for the excellent Bey had fortified himself with new mate- 
rials ; but the ladies were taken into our confidence to aid in turn- 
ing the conversation, if it should be necessary, all of which made 
a great deal of entertainment ; but there proved to be no occa- 
sion for anything of the sort. 

Buckle told some capital stories : among them, one against 
Alison, almost too good to be true, namely, that in the first edi- 
tion of his History he mentioned among the causes of the French 
Revolution 'the timber- duty,' because he had read in a French 
pamphlet that there were popular discontents about the droits cle 
timbre. 1 Alison's History, he said, is the very worst that ever 
was written. He cited a good definition, (Addison's, I believe,) 
that ' fine writing is that which is true without being obvious.' In 
the course of the conversation, in which, as before, Buckle touched 

1 It is fair to say that an examination of the chapter on the causes of 
the French Revolution, in several editions of Alison's History, including 
the first, gives this story no support. 

K K 



498 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



points in the whole circle of literature and science, giving us quo- 
tations even in Hebrew from the Talmnd and the Bible, he paid 
a very pretty compliment to our host, introduced as adroitly as 
from the lips of a professed courtier, but evidently spoken on the 
moment. It was something in this way. Hekekyan and Buckle 
were in an argument, and Buckle said, ' Ah, you mistake a neces- 
sary condition for the cause.' - What is cause but necessary condi- 
tion ? ' asked Hekekyan. ' Very different : two men can't fight a 
duel without meeting, but every two men who meet don't fight 
a duel.' ' But they couldn't fight a duel without meeting,' per- 
sisted Hekekyan. 'Yes,' rejoined Buckle; 'but the meeting 
isn't the cause of the duel. Why, there could not be a dinner- 
party, unless the company met ; but our meeting here to-day isn't 
the cause of the dinner : the cause of the dinner is the kindness 
of our host.' ' Or rather, of the landlord,' said N. ' Oh, no ! of 
the American Government,' said 0. 'Ah,' said Buckle, 'those 
things are not the cause ; the cause of our good dinner, I main- 
tain, is only the charming hospitality of the Consul- General.' Is 
not this metaphysics made easy, and prettily employed ? 

After dinner we had tea and coffee ; the ladies, in Egypt, 
could scarcely do less than allow tobacco, and Mr. Buckle parti- 
cularly enjoyed some choice cigars which T. was able to offer 
him. The party did not break up till nearly midnight, when all 
the guests retired together. 

February 11. — At dinner I was seated next to Mr. Buckle, and 
thus had an opportunity for pri vate conversation. He asked about 
American books, and told me his opinion of those he had read. 
He said that Quincy's 'History of Harvard University' was the 
latest book on America he received before leaving England. He 
preferred Kent's exposition of the United States Constitution to 
Story's, although this also he had consulted and used. He had not 
seen Mr. Charles Francis Adams's complete edition of the works 
of his grandfather, nor Parton's 'Life of Jackson,' both of which I 
begged him to read, particularly the chapters in the former in 
which are traced the steps in the progress of making the Ameri- 
can Constitutions. He told me about his library in London, 
which is surpassed (among private libraries) only by that belong- 
ing to Mr. Van de Weyer, the Belgian Minister, whose wife is the 
daughter of our Bostonian Mr. Bates, of Barings. Buckle has 
twenty-two thousand volumes, all selected by himself ; and he 
takes great pleasure in them. He spends eight or nine hundred 
pounds a year upon his library [?]. He owns copies of all the 



APPENDIX. 



499 



books referred to in his History ; some of them are very old and 
rare. He also possesses a considerable collection, made likewise by 
himself, of curiosities in natural history ; he has added largely to 
it in Egypt, where, in fact, he has been buying with open hands. 
He said he could not be perfectly happy in leaving the country, 
if obliged to go away without a crocodile's egg, a trophy which 
as yet he has been unable to obtain. 

He told me his plan of travel in America. He will not set 
■out until our domestic troubles are composed, for he desires to 
see the practical working of our institutions in their normal 
state, not confused and disturbed by the excitements of war. He 
would go first to Boston and New York, the intellectual and 
commercial heads (as he said) of the republic, — and to Washing- 
ton, the political capital. He would then like to pass from the 
Northern into the Southern States, but asked if he could travel 
safely in the latter, in view of his extreme opinions in detestation 
of slavery. I assured him that nobody would dare to molest one 
so well known, even if our war did not abate for ever the nuisance 
of lynching, to say nothing of its probable effect in promoting 
the extinction of slavery. From the Southern States he said he 
would wish to pass into Mexico, thence to Peru and to Chili ; then 
to cross the Pacific Ocean to Japan, to China, to India, and so back 
by the overland route to England. This magnificent scheme he 
has seriously resolved upon, and proposes to devote to it two or 
three years. He undertakes it partly for information and partly 
for relaxation of his mental faculties, which he has injured by 
overwork, and which imperatively demand repose. He asked 
many questions with regard to matters of detail, — whether he 
would find conveyance by steamers in the Pacific, and of what 
sort would be the accommodations in them and in sailing-vessels. 
He asked at what season he had best arrive in the United States, 
and whether he had better land at New York or at Boston. 
Boston he said he regarded as ' the intellectual head of the 
country, and New York, you know, for trade.' I answered his 
questions as well as I could, and told him he must not omit 
seeing our Western country, and some of the new cities, like 
Chicago. He asked me if I knew ' a Mrs. Child,' who had written 
him a letter and sent him her book about the history of religion. 
I knew of course that he meant ' The Progress of Religious Ideas,' 
by Mrs. L. Maria Child. He had been pleased with the letter 
and with the book. 

The conversation becoming general, Mr. B., of New York, 

K K 2 



500 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



told a story of an old Congressional debate in which John Ran- 
dolph derisively compared Edward Everett to Richelieu : Buckle 
at once said he should regard it as a compliment of the very 
highest kind to be compared to Richelieu. Tou will smile, per- 
haps, if I tell you that I could not resist asking Buckle if he had 
read Dumas's historical novels, and he said he had not, although 
he had felt an inclination to do so. He asked one or two ques- 
tions about them, and gave a rapid generalization of the history 
of France at that time. 

This conversation at the dinner- table of course was by far the 
pleasantest part of the evening, for the fantasia did not amount 
to much, although the house was a fine one, the host most cor- 
dial, and the novelty of the entertainment was enjoyable. 

February 12. — Mr. Buckle called upon T. and myself in the 
afternoon, and sat talking between two and three hours. I wish 
I could give you a fall report of all that he said. He told us of 
the only lecture he ever delivered ; it was before the Royal Insti- 
tution, March 19, 1858, and was printed in ' Eraser's Magazine * 
for April, just afterwards. It may be found reprinted in America 
in ' Littell's Living Age,' No. 734. The subject was ' The Influ- 
ence of Women on the Progress of Knowledge.' Murchison, 
Owen, and Earaday told him afterwards, separately, that they 
were perfectly satisfied with it, which is certainly a strong com- 
bination of authority. He told us all about his education, which 
is interesting, for he has been most truly self-taught. When he 
was a boy, he was so delicate that it was thought he could not 
live ; the celebrated Dr. Abernethy, who was a particular friend 
of his father, saw how important it was to keep him from mental 
excitement, and begged that he might not be troubled by lessons. 
Accordingly, he was never sent to school at any time, except for 
a brief period to a clergyman who had directions not to make him 
study ; and he was never regularly taught anything. Until eight 
years of age he hardly knew his letters. At the age of fifteen he 
found out Shakspeare and read it with great zest. At seventeen he 
conceived the plan of his book [?], and resolved to do two things 
to make himself fit to write it : first, he resolved to devote four 
hours a day to the study of physical science, in order that he 
might be able fully to understand and to unfold its relations with 
history ; secondly, he resolved to devote an equal portion of each 
day to the study of English composition and practice in writing, 
in order that he might be able to set forth his opinions with force 
and perspicuity. To these resolutions he adhered for twelve 



APPENDIX. 



501 



years. Every day, after breakfast, he shut himself up for four 
hours with his experiments and his investigations : and after- 
wards devoted four hours to analysing the style of the best 
English authors, inquiring (as he said) ' where it was that I wrote 
worse than they.' He studied not only in England, but in Ger- 
many and other European countries. He learned all the lan- 
guages which he knows (and he knows nearly all I ever heard of) 
without the aid of a master in any, excepting German, in which 
he began with a master, but soon dismissed him, because he 
hindered more than he helped. He read Hebrew with a Jewish 
rabbi, but that was after he had learned the language. He con- 
siders the knowledge of languages valuable only as the stepping- 
stone to other learning, and spoke with contempt of a person in 
Egypt who was mentioned to him as speaking eight languages 
familiarly. 

' Has he done anything ? ' ' No.' ' Then he is only fit to be 
a courier.' 

Buckle is not a university-man, although both his father and 
grandfather were educated at Cambridge. 

He has long since abandoned the practice of writing at night, 
and now does not put pen to paper after three o'clock in the after- 
noon. When at home, in London, he walks every day, for about 
an hour and a half, at noon ; frequently dines out, and reads 
perhaps an hour after coming home. He goes exclusively to 
dinner-parties, because they take less time than others. When 
he is engaged in composition, he walks about the room, some- 
times excitedly, his mind engrossed with his subject, until he has 
composed an entire paragraph, when he sits down and writes it, 
never retouching, nor composing sentence by sentence, which he 
thinks has a tendency to give an abrupt and jerky effect to what 
is written. Traces of this, he thinks, may be found in Macaulay's 
style. 

Mr. Thayer showed him the little stock of books he happened 
to have with him at Cairo. Mr. Buckle looked them over with 
interest, expressing his opinions upon them. One of them, Mr. 
Bayle St. John's little book on the Turkish question, he borrowed, 
although he said that he denied himself all reading on this jour- 
ney, undertaken for mental rest, and had brought no books with 
him. We got upon the inevitable subject of international copy- 
right, which he discussed in a spirit of remarkable candour. His 
own experience was this : that the Messrs. Appleton reprinted 
his first volume without compensation, asking him to furnish 



502 



TIL GRIM- MEM OKIES. 



materials for a prefatory memoir, of which request he took no 
notice ; afterwards, when the second volume was published, they 
sent him something, I believe fifty pounds. In due course of 
time, receiving a request from Theodore Parker to that effect, he 
wrote a letter to aid him in the preparation of a memoir for the 
Messrs. Appleton's Cyclopsedia. 

I pointed out to Mr. Buckle the very important distinction 
between copyright for the British author and monopoly for the Bri- 
tish publisher. I told him that the American people and their 
representatives in Congress would not have the least objection 
to paying a trifling addition to the cost of books, which would 
make, upon the immense editions sold of the popular books, a 
handsome compensation to the foreign authors, — but that they 
have very decided objections to the English system of enormously 
high prices for books. I instanced to him several books which 
can be bought in the United States for a quarter or half a dollar, 
while in England they cannot be purchased for less than a guinea 
and a half, that is, for seven or eight dollars, — although the author 
gains very little by these high prices, which, indeed, would be- 
absolutely prohibitory of the circulation of the books in the 
United States. And since the great literary market of the United 
States has been created at the public expense, by the maintenance 
of the system of universal education, it is perhaps not unreason- 
able that our legislators should insist upon preserving, by the 
competition among publishers, the advantages of low prices of 
books, in pursuance of a policy which looks to a wide circula- 
tion. In. Great Britain the publishers follow a different policy, 
and insist on selling books at high prices to a comparatively 
small circle of readers. 

Mr. Buckle was kind enough to listen attentively to this sort 
of reasoning, and had the candour to admit that it was entitled 
to some degree of weight. Indeed, he said at once that he had 
earnestly wished to bring out a cheap edition of his own book in 
England, omitting the notes and references, for the use of the 
working- classes, of whose appreciation, as I have previously men- 
tioned, he had received many gratifying proofs ; he had made his 
arrangements for this purpose, but was prevented from carrying 
them out by the opposition of his publishers, who objected that 
such an edition would injure their interest in the more costly 
edition. But Mr. Buckle freely declared that he would, in his 
circumstances, rather forego the profit on the sale of his book 
than restrict its circulation. 



APPENDIX. 



503 



I m&y, perhaps, be permitted to mention that another English 
author related to me his home experience, precisely to the same 
effect, in which the vested interests of his publishers thwarted 
him in his wish to publish an edition of his writings at a low 
price for general circulation. It is quite certain that the British 
public must themselves be disenthralled from the tyranny of high 
prices with which they are now burdened, before they can ask to 
bring another land under the dominion of their exclusive system 
in literature. 

This conversation led to a description of the reading public in 
America, — of the intelligence and independence of our working- 
people, — of their habits of life and of thought, — about which Buckle 
manifested great interest, asking many intelligent questions. 

Mr. Buckle is in easy circumstances, and attends personally 
to the management of his money. He finds no difficulty in 
letting it upon first-class mortgages, at five per cent., and does 
not expect a higher rate of interest. 

February 13. — To-night there was a religious celebration, 
including an illumination, in the mosque at the Citadel. We had 
expected to go and see it ; and Mr. T. had invited Mr. B. and 
his party, as well as Mr. Buckle, and the two lads by whom he 
is accompanied in his journeyings, to go with us, 

But at the last moment before dinner the advice was strongly 
given on all sides that we should not go, lest some bigoted Mus- 
sulmans should take offence, and there might be a disturbance. 
Not long ago, a party of Englishmen behaved very badly in the 
mosque on a similar occasion, from which has resulted a disturbed 
state of feeling. It of course cannot be pleasant to people of any 
religious belief to have their ceremonies made a spectacle for 
curiosity ; and although the mouclier (mayor of the city) promised 
ample protection, the plan was given up, and the company being 
gathered, Ave had a pleasant evening together. The presence of 
the ladies of Mr. B/s party gave the opportunity to see Mr. 
Buckle again under the inspiration of ladies' society, which he 
especially enjoys, and in the lighter conversation suited to which 
he shines with not less distinction than when conversing upon 
abstruse topics. 

In the course of the evening, in the midst of conversation in 
which he was taking an animated part, Mr. Buckle exhibited 
symptoms of faintness. Fresh air was at once admitted to the 
room, which was full of cigar-smoke ; water and more powerful 
restoratives were brought, but these he declined. After a few 



504 



TIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



minutes' repose upon the divan, he declared that he was perfectly 
recovered, and half an hour afterwards took his leave with the 
boys. We were quite anxious until we heard that he had safely 
reached his boat, in which he is still living. 

February 15. — This day we had an excursion to the Petri- 
fied Forest. Mr. Buckle was determined to go in a thing called 
a mazetta, a sort of huge bedstead with curtains, borne on the 
back of a camel, big enough to carry a small family, in which he 
expected to find room for himself and the two boys travelling 
with him. Besides these, the party included the Bev. Mr. 
Lansing, the excellent head of the American mission here, the 
Hon. W. S., a young Englishman, and his tutor, the Bev. 
Mr. S., whose agreeable company had been bespoken when the 
camel-project was in full strength. 

On looking down from the balcony at the transportation-train 
marshalled for the occasion, amid the admiring gaze of all the 
idlers of Cairo, I was at first a little chagrined to find, as the final 
result of the various arrangements, that, besides the camels, the 
mazetta, the carriage-and-four, and the proud-stepping horse, 
there appeared but one donkey, that selected for me. But I was, 
in truth, very well off. To begin with, it was not thought prudent 
that Mr. Buckle should use the mazetta until the procession had 
got beyond the narrow streets of Cairo, lest the camel bearing it 
should take fright and knock the whole thing to pieces against 
the wall of a house. Accordingly, he and his charges took 
donkeys, and I rode off with them, at the head of the column. 
By-and-by Mr. Buckle changed to the conveyance originally pro- 
posed, but a very short experiment (literally, I suspect) sickened 
him of the mazetta, whose motion is precisely that of a ship in a 
storm, and he sent back to the town for donkeys. At the next 
halt the ladies took him into the carriage, where he found himself, 
as he said, ' in clover,' and that was the end of his greatness in 
camel-riding. This remark, by the way, suggested a name 
(' Clover ') for our boat in our voyage up the Nile just after- 
wards ; but patriotism prevailed, and we named her 'Union.' 

The journey to the forest, about ten miles, was safely accom- 
plished. We found the petrifactions duly wonderful. An ex- 
cellent luncheon was laid out, after which we had an hour and a 
half of very entertaining conversation, in which Mr. Buckle and 
the Bev. Mr. S. held the leading parts, — all around us as desolate 
and silent as one could imagine. It was interesting to observe 
the manner in which Buckle estimated eminent names, grouping 



APPENDIX. 



505 



them in some instances by threes, a favourite conceit with him. 
John Stuart Mill, of all living men, he considers as possessing the 
greatest mind in the world. Aristotle, Newton, and Shakspeare 
are the greatest the world has produced in past times. Homer, 
Dante, and Shakspeare are the only three great poets. Johnson, 
Gibbon, and Parr are the three writers who have done the greatest 
harm to the English language. Of Hallam he has a strong ad- 
miration. He spoke of Sydney Smith as the greatest English 
wit, and of Selwyn as next to him, and described Macaulay's 
memory as unequalled in conversation. 

February 1 6. — The morning was gratefully devoted to rest. 
In the afternoon, attended service at the Mission, where the Rev. 
Mr. S. preached an interesting discourse from John xv. 1-4. On 
the way home met Mr. Buckle, who came in, and was persuaded 
to stay to dinner. In speaking of religion, he said that there is 
no doctrine or truth in Christianity that had not been announced 
before, but that Christianity is by far the noblest religion in ex- 
istence. The chief point of its superiority is the prominence it 
gives to the humane and philanthropic element ; and in giving 
this prominence lies its originality. He believes in a Great First 
Cause, but does not arrive at his belief by any process of reason- 
ing satisfactory to himself. Paley's argument, from the evidence 
of design, he regards as futile : if the beauty of this world indi- 
cates a creating cause, the beauty of that great cause would 
suggest another, and so on. He believes in a Future State, and 
declared most impressively that life w 7 ould be insupportable to 
him, if he thought he were for ever to be separated from one 
person, — alluding, it is probable, to his mother, to whose memory 
he dedicates the second volume of his book. 1 He has no doubt 
that in the Future State we shall recognise one another ; whether 
we shall have the same bodies he has no opinion, although he 
regards matter as indestructible. He declares himself unable to 
form any judgment as to the mode of future existence. Religion, 
he says, is on the increase in the w r orld, but theology is declining. 

Mr. Buckle characterized as the sublimest passage in Shak- 
speare the lines in the ' Merchant of Venice,' — 

' Look how the floor of heaven 
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold ! 
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st 

1 The words he uses are, — ' To the memory of my mother I consecrate 
this volume.' 



506 



JPIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



But in his motion like an angel sings, 
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubims: 
Such harmony is in immortal souls ! 
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay 
Doth grossly close it in, we cannot hear it.' 

Mr. Thayer suggested the similarity between the closing part 
of this passage, about our deafness to the music of the stars, 
owing to the c muddy vesture,' and the sonnet of Blanco White 
which speaks of the starry splendours to which our eyes are 
blinded by the light of day : — ■ 

' Mysterious Night ! when our first parent knew 
Thee, from report divine, and heard thy name, 
Did he not tremble for this lovely frame, 
This glorious canopy of light and blue ? 
Yet 'neath the curtain of translucent dew, 
Bathed in the rays of the great setting flame, 
Hesperus with the host of heaven came, 
And lo ! creation widened in man's view. 
Who could have thought such darkness lay concealed 
Within thy beams, 0 Sun ? or who could find, 
Whilst fly and leaf and insect stood revealed, 
That to such countless orbs thou mad'st us blind ? 
Why do we, then, shun Death with anxious strife ? 
If Light can thus deceive, wherefore not Life ?' 

Mr. Buckle seemed to be struck by the comparison. He pro- 
ceeded to speak of Blanco White's memoirs as painfully interest- 
ing, and said that he had always liked Archbishop Whately for 
adhering to White after the desertion of the latter by old friends 
on account of his change of belief. 

The next few days were occupied in preparations for the 
voyage up the Nile in company with my New York friends. Mr. 
Buckle had very kindly taken great interest in our plans, and had 
earnestly advised me to go. ' You will do very wrong indeed/ 
he said, ' if you do not go.' On the 19th of February we em- 
barked ; and as we saluted his boat, lying just below ns in the 
Nile, while our own shoved off, I little thought that I should 
never see him again, — that his brilliant career was so shortly to 
come to an untimely end. The serious conversation just recorded 
was the last in which I took part with him. 



APPENDIX. 



507 



III. 



THE DEATH AND GRAVE OF MR. BUCKLE. 

Author's Letter to The Times, June 18, 18G2 ; and Letters to the 
Author from Dr. Barclay (American Physician at Beirut), and Miss 
Rogers (sister of HJB.M. late Consul at Damascus). 

Sir, — It is my painful duty to announce, not only to his 
nearer friends and relatives, as I have already done, but also, 
through you, to the world interested in the author of the 
'History of Civilisation in England,' the death of Mr. Buckle 
on Thursday, the 29th of May, of typhus fever, at Damascus. 

He had overworked himself, and suddenly felt the effects of 
it after the publication of his second volume last spring. In 
October he left England, accompanied by two boys, the sons of a 
friend, and spent the winter on the Nile. He was so much, 
better that, in the beginning of March, we left Cairo together for 
Sinai and Petra. Greatly improved in health by the six weeks 
in the desert, he undertook the more fatiguing travelling on 
horseback through Palestine. Again his ardent temperament, 
or rather, as I now think, the restlessness of an over-excited 
nervous system, made him do too nxuch; and, though, on the 
27th of April, he expressed himself as having never felt in 
better health in his life, he was that day seized with diarrhoea, 
and afterwards with an attack of sore throat, which detained us 
at Nazareth for more than a week. 

He never recovered his Desert strength, and we had to stop 
a couple of days longer than we had proposed at Sidon, and take 
the easiest, though least interesting route to Damascus. At the 
sudden view of that famous plain, on emerging from the rocky 
defile on the eastern ridge of Anti-Lebanon, he exclaimed, ' It is 
worth more than all the pain and fatigue it has cost me ! ' Alas ! 
how much more it was to cost him. 

The fatigue again brought on diarrhoea. The quantity of 
opium prescribed, though small, yet, with his peculiar constitution, 



508 



PIL GRIM-MEMORIES. 



produced delirium for about a quarter of an hour ; and it was 
touching to hear him exclaim in the midst of his incoherent 
utterances, ' Oh, my book, my book, I shall never finish my 
book ! ' The French medical officer, however, whom he con- 
sulted, not only assured him, but myself privately, that there 
was nothing whatever to fear, only that it would be advisable to 
give up the proposed excursion to Baalbek, and through the 
Lebanon, and return by the French carriage road to Beyrout. 
On these assurances, and finding him apparently much better on 
the 21st, I regret to say I was induced to leave him, and go the 
long route through the Lebanon alone, in the confident expecta- 
tion, however, that I should find him waiting for me at Beyrout, 
reinvigorated by the sea-air, and ready to proceed on our journey 
to Greece and Turkey. I need not say how shocked I was to 
hear at the Consulate yesterday (the 31st May) that, on the 
evening of the day I left Damascus (the 21st), he was seized with 
typhus fever, sunk into an unconscious stupor on the 26th, died, 
and was buried on the 29th. One thing, I confess, I fear may 
have hastened the end ; he was leeched. But the kindness and 
attention of our Acting Consul, Mr. Sanclwith, the American mis- 
sionary Mr. Robson, and the American physician Dr. Barclay, 
who went up expressly from Beyrout, must be warmly acknow- 
ledged. The stimulants applied by the latter had only the effect 
of producing the partial and very temporary return to conscious- 
ness which preceded his decease. 

Thus, at the early age of forty, died one whose death, I 
think, more than the partiality of a friend makes me consider a 
national loss. It is left for believers to hope that he is now enjoying 
that immortality without the hope of which, as he once said to 
me with tears in his eyes, life 'would be insupportable,' and in 
the more immediate presence, and with deeper knowledge of 
that God in whom he firmly believed. And so, carried through 
the ruins of the Christian quarter, outside the walls, on the same 
day he died, and as the sun set over the mountain ridge from which 
with such delight he had but ten days before — such is the irony 
of life — gazed on his death-bed, he was interred in the small 
Protestant cemetery, its trees torn up and its eight or ten 
tombstones broken by fanatical Mohammedans. 

Mr. Buckle's delicate health as a boy caused him to be taken 
early from school, and prevented his being sent to college. On 
the death of his father he succeeded at eighteen to a considerable 



APPENDIX. 



fortune, but despising its temptations, lie devoted himself to 
study. His chief recreation was chess, and he could number 
Loewenthal among the vanquished. He early attracted the 
notice of such men as Hallam and Bunsen, and gained their 
esteem as a young man of great promise. With all the comfort 
and advantages of book- collecting and of travelling afforded by 
fortune, he lived a happy student's life, and had, in the course of 
it, but one great grief. 

As to Mr. Buckle's works, it would be impossible for me here- 
to say much without such obtrusion of my own opinions as would 
be here and now utterly out of place. But this I may say, that 
the three great theses of his book have never yet been sufficiently 
or at all considered. Hence great part of what has been said in 
the reviews may be true, and yet the book in its pith and marrow 
stand. These three theses, chiefly to be drawn from the second 
and fourth chapters, are : — 

1. Political Economy, the Science of Wealth, is the deduc- 
tive science through which the investigation of natural is con- 
nected with that of social phenomena, and thus the way prepared 
for one universal science. 

2. The Laws of Society are different from those of the Indi- 
vidual ; and the Method of Averages, with which has to be com- 
pared the mathematical Theory of Probabilities, is that by Avhich 
the former are to be investigated. 

3. In Social phenomena, the intellectual, in Individual, the 
moral laws are chiefly or alone to be considered ; all moral 
social changes are thus preceded by intellectual changes. 

With these three theses might be very clearly shown to be 
connected all his scientific opinions ; as might all his opinions on 
morals and politics be shown to group themselves about his con- 
ception of Liberty or Non-interference. Thus the moral law 
became merely negati ve. Do not hurt yourself or others. But, 
as I have said, how far these views are true, or how far original, 
cannot here be considered. It may, however, be observed that, 
though he held firmly by the second of the above theses, he often 
said he should be glad, so far as his own feelings were concerned, 
to see the third disproved. 

And as to that account of the history of Civilisation in Scot- 
land which, under the misrepresentation of reviews, has been so 
little welcomed by my own countrymen, I may add that he 
himself admitted that, for the great and complete historian, the 



510 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



profound moral and religions sympathy of the poet, in which he 
was wanting, is almost as necessary as the analytical power of 
the philosopher ; and it was his enthusiasm for liberty that made 
him intolerant of intolerance. 

Though Mr. Buckle's lamentable death leaves undone, not 
only so much of what he intended, but of what he had prepared 
elaborate materials for, I am glad to say that his posthumous 
works may be no less valuable than those which have already 
appeared. I fear that the proposed essays ' On the Ultimate 
Causes of the Interest of Money,' ' On Bacon ' (which would have 
been chiefly an essay on Method), ' On Shakspeare,' and ' On 
the Influence of Northern Palestine on the Origin of Christianity/ 
may not be found in a sufficient state of forwardness to be pub- 
lished, as he proposed, collectively with the papers he had con- 
tributed to ' Fraser's Magazine ; 5 but great parts of the special 
' History of Civilisation in England ' exist ready for publication, 
and his Commonplace-Books, with their unusually varied, yet 
methodically arranged extracts, will form the most curious, inte- 
resting, and valuable collection of materials that has, probably, 
ever yet been published as the work of a single English student, 
and this publication will be according to his own intention in 
case of the non- completion of his work. 

I am, Sir, yours obediently, 

J. S. Stuart- G-lennie. 

Beyrout, June 1, 1862. 

Beyrut, February 25, 1865. 

My dear Sir, — Your favour of the 26th ult. was not received 
till last post, and I hasten to inform you of the cause of the non- 
fulfilment of my promise to forward yon any papers relative to, 
or particulars of, the illness and death of the .late lamented 
Henry Thomas Buckle. ... I arrived in Damascus on the 
afternoon of May 26 [1862], after a hard ride of a day and a half, 
and immediately repaired to the sick chamber. Found Mr. Buckle 
insensible, cold extremities, general surface cold and bedewed with 
a clammy perspiration, and breathing stertorously. The pulse 
frequent, feeble, and retracted. Tongue of a reddish-brown 
colour, and quite hard and dry. . . . The coffee-ground vomit 
had also supervened. 

Sinapisms were applied at once to the extremities, and an 
assafoetida enema given, while turpentine and the sesquicar- 



APPENDIX. 



511 



bonate of ammonia were ordered by the mouth, alternating with 
brandy. The French physician could not be found at once, but 
I was informed by the young gentlemen travelling under care 
of Mr. B. that the patient had been in the above condition for 
more than twenty-four hours. 

The French medical attendant met me in consultation a few 
hours after my arrival, and agreed to the change of treatment. 
He protested that his patient had on several occasions declined 
taking his remedies, substituting others from his own travelling- 
chest. Under the above stimulants, Mr. Buckle rallied so far as 
to become semi-conscious ; and if my memory serve me aright, 
even recognised his young travelling companions. The good 
effect of the stimulants, however, proved only transient ; and 
towards morning symptoms of collapse reappeared. I met Dr. 
Nicora, the French physician, in consultation at early dawn, 
when it was evident that any further medication would only 
serve to add discomfort to the last moments of a dying man. He 
had relapsed into a state of coma, and quietly expired at about 
eleven a.m. Mr. Buckle was attended by an English nurse, the 
maid of Lady Ellenborough, and was constantly visited by the 
Rev. Mr. Robson and Mr. Sandwith, the latter then Acting 
British Consul, who had also, I was informed, tended him during 
several nights. The corpse was interred on the afternoon of the 
day of his death, the Rev. Mr. Robson reading the English burial 
service. 

The above, though written from memory, I believe to be a 
correct, though not so detailed a statement of the case as I 
should like to give you. . . . 

Believe me to remain, 

Very truly yours, 

R. G. Barclay. 

J. S. Stuart- Glennie, Esq. 

21 Coborn Street, Bow, E., February 20, 1875. 

Dear Sir, — In reply to your letter of inquiry respecting the 
circumstances of the erection of the tomb over the remains of 
Mr. Buckle, I hasten to send you the following particulars. 

Towards the close of the year 1865, I went to Damascus, to 
stay with my brother, Mr. E. T. Rogers, H.B.M. Consul at 
Damascus, his wife having recently died of cholera there. Soon 



512 



P1L GRIM-MEMORIES. 



after my arrival I visited the Protestant cemetery, to see the great 
block of stone which had been placed over her grave. 

The cemetery is on the south-east side of the city, on the high 
road to Bagdhad, near a very ancient open burial-place of the 
Jews. It is a small square enclosure ; the walls are quite plain and 
rudely built, but they are so high, that they entirely conceal the 
beautiful views around ; even the mountains and tallest minarets 
are out of sight, and there is nothing within the unpicturesque 
enclosure to compensate for this. 

The place where Buckle was interred was pointed out to me, 
and I was surprised and sorry to find that there was no stone 
even to mark the spot. 

I immediately wrote home to ascertain whether any of Mr. 
Buckle's personal friends wished to have a monument erected, 
while the place of his interment could be identified with certainty, 
and I volunteered to superintend the carrying out of any design 
which might be proposed. In the meantime I made up my mind 
to place some memorial there before leaving Damascus, and to do 
so on my own account, if no one came forward to help. One of 
my letters home on this subject was shown to my friend Major 
Evans Bell, and he communicated the contents to two of Mr. 
Buckle's most intimate friends, Mr. Henry Huth and Mr. John 
Dickenson. They heard of the omission with surprise and regret, 
and kindly undertook to consult Mrs. Allatt, the only sister of 
Mr. Buckle, and to ascertain her wishes on the subject. After 
some little delay, I was informed by Major Bell that Mrs. Allatt 
willingly availed herself of the opportunity, and gave me per- 
mission to have a monument erected at her expense, without any 
restriction as to cost, and with no directions as to the design, 
except that she provided me with a short inscription for it. 

I determined to make a table- or altar-tomb, formed of a large 
slab of pure white marble framed within a border of black basalt, 
to be raised on a course of sienna-coloured stone, resting on a 
broad base of black basalt, with a pavement of the sienna- coloured 
stone and basalt around it. 

My next step was to secure the services of a good mason. 
After watching many men at work, I selected one who seemed 
the most intelligent and skilful. I desired him to come to the 
Consulate, and I showed him my design, but he assured me that 
there was not a slab of white marble in Damascus of the size I 
required, viz. four feet by two feet and a half, and six inches in 



APPENDIX. 



51? 



thickness ; but he undertook to order it for me, at once, from the 
Greek Islands. 

I find by my diary that, on August 31, 1866, the slab having 
arrived, I drew the inscription upon its smooth surface in per- 
fectly plain letters ready for the mason. He executed the work 
entirely in the courtyard of the Consulate, that I might overlook 
it and prevent him making any mistakes in the cutting of the 
unfamiliar characters. He engraved the letters deeply and with 
great precision, and filled them in with a black plaster, which, 
when dry, becomes as hard as stone. 

The epitaph sent by Mrs. Allatt made no allusion to Mr. 
Buckle as an author, and I did not feel at liberty to add anything 
to it, but I ventured to supplement it with an Arabic inscription. 
By the advice of several Damascus friends, including the Emir 
Abd-el-Kader and Mohammed Effendi, I decided on a very 
ancient and simple Arabic couplet, which may be rendered into 
English thus : — 

The written word remains long after the writer ; 

The writer is resting- under the earth, but his works endure. 

A celebrated monumental writer, named Mohammed the Sufite, 
wrote this inscription for me on the marble very beautifully. 
Each line was enclosed in an oblong space, the ends of which were 
artistically shaped. Within two corresponding spaces or tablets 
below, it was recorded that Henry Thomas Buckle died on the 
29th of May, 1862, aged 40. 

The mason cut away the ground within the border of each 
tablet, leaving the gracefully interlacing letters sharply cut, in 
bold relief ; he filled up the ground with the black cement or 
plaster. An excellent effect was thus produced. The Arabic 
inscription being white on a black ground, and occupying a com- 
paratively small space, contrasted well with the plain English 
inscription in black on the white ground. 

It may be interesting to record that the cost of the materials, 
including the Greek marble, the black basalt from the Hauran, 
the sienna- coloured limestone from the Salihiyeh quarries, added 
to the wages of the mason and of labourers employed by him, 
amounted only to 16Z., and this sum I received in due time 
from Mr. Huth on behalf of Mrs. Allatt. I cannot spare a pho- 
tograph of the inscription, for I have only one left ; but I enclose 
a small sketch of the tomb. 1 have never seen anything except 

L L 



514 



PILGRIM-MEMORIES. 



thistles, and coarse grass, and a few weeds round this grave, 
growing out of the stony ground. One cannot make a picture 
of it. The grave is not quite due east and west. 

Believe me, dear Sir, 

Yours faithfully, 

Mart Eliza Rogers. 

To J. S. Stuart- Glennie, Esq. 




THE END. 



LONDON : PRINTED BY 
SPOTTISWODDE AND CO., NEW-STREET SQUARE 
AND PARLIAMENT STREET 



THE 

MODERN REVOLUTION; 

Or, OUR PRESENT HISTORICAL PERIOD IN THE 
DESTRUCTIVE AND RECONSTRUCTIVE RESULTS AND TENDENCIES 
DETERMINED BY AN ULTIMATE LAW OF HISTORY. 

By JOHN S. STUABT-G-LENNIE, M.A., Barrister-at-Law. 



PROSPECTUS. 

The Philosophy of the end of the eighteenth, and of the nine- 
teenth, century cannot, perhaps, be more truly characterised in its 
most fructiferous hypotheses — Hume's 'Theory of the Natural 
History of Religion,' Comte's 1 Law of the Three Periods,' Kant's 
' Idea of a General History,' Hegel's 1 Notion,' or Law of Thought, 
and Spencer's ' Theory of Evolution ' — than as an attempt to grasp 
the outlines of Man's history, and give a synthetic view of it more 
in accordance with our later knowledge than that which forms the 
creed of Christianity. The Ultimate Law of History I have been 
led to define as a certain Change, and Process of Change, in men's 
notions of the Causes of Change. And my definition of the Change, 
and Process of Change, constituting this Law, appears to be such a 
development and reconciliation of all the above-specified theories 
and laws, that, in a series of works, with the general title of The 
Modem Revolution, I propose to attempt the verification of this 
Law in showing how it, and, as would appear, it alone, affords an 
adequate explanation of the past history of Civilisation, and hence, 
of the destructive and reconstructive results and tendencies of our 
Present Historical Period. 

The antagonism, however, to the Christian theory of History, 
of that new theory summarised in this Ultimate Law ; the refuta- 
tion of the Christian theory by the explanation which this Law 
gives of the origin of Christianity ; and the New Ideal which arises 
from the establishment of this Law, it is, first of all, important to 
point out. Such, therefore, will be the objects of an Introductory 
Historical Analysis, entitled, In the Morninglancl. And for the 
sake of bringing this New Law of History, its antagonism to the 
Christian theory, and the New Ideal of which this Law is the basis, 
more vividly home to the reader, a prefatory volume, or Proozmium, 
entitled, Pilgrim-Memories, will give an account of those travels and 
discussions in the Birthcountries of Christianity which, in so many 
ways, contributed to the discovery of this Law. 

The Systematic Exposition, which follows these introductory 
volumes, will have, as the object of its first part, entitled, Relation- 



ism; or, the Principles of the New Philosophy, to show that that 
conception of Causation which our Law of History defines as the 
final predictable one, is actually that which most truly generalises 
all the chief results of modern scientific research. The second part, 
entitled The Ultimate Law of History ; or, the Basis of the New 
Ideal, will, in a general review of human development, and especially 
since the great era of the Sixth Century B.C., be as complete a 
verification, as may be in my power, of the Law of History as the 
process of a certain change in men's notions of the Causes of Change. 
And of the third part, entitled Socialism ; or, the Institutions of the 
New Polity, it will be the object to indicate the outlines of those 
social institutions of the future which — as the logical correlates of 
our later conception of Causation, and as the natural outcome of the 
revolutions by which the process of the change to that conception 
has been socially marked — our Law of History may enable us to 
predict. 

But as a change in men's notions of the Causes of Change is a 
change in their conception of God, and hence, in the whole circle of 
their religious beliefs ; and as our Law of History would lead us to 
see in our Present Historical Period, the consummation of such a 
change ; there is thus offered to us the spectacle of a tragic Conflict 
of Ideas, an action of the sublimest kind for dramatic representation. 
To represent — or at least, to make some suggestions towards the 
representation of — this conflict in a New Music-drama will be the 
object of a Concluding Poetical Synthesis, entitled King Arthur. 
And, as the New Ideal, arising from our New Theory of History, 
requires for its expression new matter of form adequate to its 
new matter of thought, a Supplement, entitled Arthunana, will give 
certain researches and results regarding the Arthurian liomance- 
Cycle as the needed New Mythology for Art. 

As each of these works has been composed, or at least, planned, 
as a definite, constituent part of the whole work entitled The Modern 
Revolution, it seemed to me that the scope and meaning of no one of 
these works could be clearly seen unless its relation to the others 
were pointed- out in such a Prospectus as this. But I would also 
hope, through this Prospectus, to obtain, from fellow- workers, such 
aid in accomplishing the objects proposed, as I become more and 
more conscious of requiring. And these are the grounds of this 
hope : all scientific thinkers will admit that our present intellectual 
and social anarchy can be terminated only by the discovery of such 
an Objective Principle of Authority as an Ultimate Law of History 
would afford ; the Law which I have stated as such an Ultimate 
Law I put-forward only as a development of Laws previously 
stated ; and the Law, thus put-forward, is held only as an hypothesis, 
unreservedly submitted to the results of scientific verification. 

J. S. S.-G. 

Lincoln's Inn, 18G7-7<3. 



Just published, in 1 vol. Svo. price 14s. cloth. 

PILGRIM-MEMORIES: 

OB, 

TKAVEL AND DISCUSSION 
IN THE BIRTH-COUNTRIES OF CHRISTIANITY 
WITH THE LATE HENRY THOMAS BUCKLE. 

By JOHN S. STUART-GLENNTIE, M.A. Barrister-at-Law. 



EXTRACTS FROM REVIEWS. 

Academy. 

' This work . . . contains matter worthy of the utmost thought. It 
should be welcome to all who wish to see some concord return to the beliefs 
of men, because it is a serious and powerful statement on the part of one who 
totally rejects existing creeds, of a positive, an enthusiastic faith. And it 
should command the attention of the student of history because it bases this 
faith on a carefully-reasoned historical law. These are the tM r o chief elements 
in the book, though many minor points of interest are touched, and many 
charming descriptions of Eastern life and scenery are made the text of the 
discourses. . . . But one great value of the book is that it is written through- 
out with a sympathetic heart ; with passions aglow with the pathos and 
tragedy of human life ; a life pathetic enough on every view, but doubly so, 
indeed, to one who sees the long passion of man's faith and trust fading into 
mockery, the long agony of his self-devotion scorned ; save that there was none 
to scorn it. . . . Many more points suggest themselves for comment in this 
deeply-reaching book.' 

Athenaeum. 

' One of the principal features of the book is that it contains descriptions 
of several sites from a decidedly anti-Christian point of view ; and when we a 
compare them with the hackneyed phraseology of the ordinary pilgrim in the 
Holy Land, we must at least own that they are fresh and original. ... In 
spite of all its faults, the book is interesting as an attempt by an earnest 
thinker to work out a system of philosophy for himself. If the inquirer has 
arrived at something which he believes to. be superior to Christianity, he is 
welcome to his belief; but the reader is also entitled to his own.' 

Literary World. 
' Mr. Stuart- Glennie . . . regards Christianity as the main force in a great 
and beneficent moral revolution. . . . The book contains some able and many 
eloquent passages.' 

Inquirer. 

' This is indeed a many-sided volume, and one to whose genuine and at 
times almost electrifying interest we can give but narrow and stinted recogni- . 
tion within the limit of our columns. Considered merely as a portfolio of 
travel-sketches, it certainly bears away the palm from most, if not all, the 
works of recent Eastern travellers. But its characteristic is the union or 
interfusing of meditative thought with picturesque descriptions. . . . His 
mind and heart gravitate towards the discussion of the religious question, in 
those aspects in which Mr. Buckle, and, indeed, most other European thinkers, 
have generally preferred ignoring it. Mr. Stuart-Gl*ennie's is, therefore, a 
real " pilgrimage." . . . The contiguity of the " holy places " suggests to him, 
it is true, very little in praise of persons or traditions that are purely Biblical. 
But it causes a throng of the deepest modern questions to arise surgingly 
within his mind, and leads him to press further and further the diagnosis of 
of our moral and social state. . . . He seems to us far in advance of Mr. 
Buckle in the depth and range of his speculative opinions. There is no fear 
that a subject like " The Modern Revolution " will be exhausted by him or by 
any other man. It is quite true that the English public is in a state of sleepy 
indifference on this whole group of questions; but perhaps Mr. Stuakt- 
Glennie may succeed in dispelling it. We know of no living English writer 
more competent than Mr. Stuart- Glennie to deal with this vast, exciting, and, 
in the long run, inevitable theme.' 



Blackwood's Magazine. 
' Notwithstanding the portentous length and arrogance of these reasonings, 
there is a curious something about them, a naive and artless flavour of 
enthusiasm . . . which has an . . . almost attractive effect upon the reader 
who can manage to keep his mind free from all prejudice, and take with com- 
posure this romantic crusade against the Christian faith. . . . Meantime, he 
[Mr. Stuart-Glennie] impresses upon our mind a mental portrait of such 
simplicity and straightforwardness, that we feel disposed to be pleased with 
such a new acquaintance. His faith in himself is not repulsive, as self- 
confidence generally is.' 

Scotsman. 

' Mr. Stuart- Glennie is an Idealist, while Mr. Bttckxe was, in a sense, a 
Materialist, denying, whilst Mr. Glennie stoutly maintained, the influence of 
" moral forces" in History. . . . Though Mr. Stuart-Glennie's religious, 
or rather what most people will call anti-religious, views are extreme, and 
sometimes expressed with startling plainness, such passages as the follow- 
ing will show that, though never mincing the expression of his thoughts, he does 
not speak in the spirit of the mere scoffer. . . . The philosophical discussions 
in the form of dialogue between two men, each of great ability, though of 
different kinds and degrees, will be found very interesting.' 

Nonconformist. 

' If not always satisfactory, Mr. Stuart-Glennie is generally straight- 
forward, suggestive, and well worth reading, in spite of his severe and not 
always quite well-weighed attacks on Judaism and Christianity. In the 
present volume we have him at his very best . . . his theorising is broken up 
by narrative, by picture, by incident ; and, so far as we have it, is given in the 
form of discussion or explanation, with ever and again the most suggestive 
and interesting glimpses of his companions. . . . Mr. Glennie's account of 
the Desert and of Palestine is interesting, but still more his discussions with 
Mr. Buckle. . . . His thinking is uniformly characterised by penetration and 
grasp. . . . The account of Mr. Buckle's death which we have here is in 
every way touching.' 

Notes and Queries. 

There are many passages of interest in the discussions recorded between the 
Author and Mr. Buckle, and it is curious to see how the balance inclines now 
to one side and now to the other, sometimes the one and sometimes the other 
exhibiting the greater fairness towards that Faith which both had abandoned, 
and whose cradle they were on their way to visit. ... If Pilgrim-Memories 
were not otherwise remarkable, it would at least have the merit of forewarning 
us of the nature of the " Modern Eevolution." ' 

Examiner. 

4 This is a very remarkable work, an interesting book to read, and one that 
affords almost inexhaustible matter for discussion. ... He [Mr. Stuart- 
Glennie] displays a remarkable talent for turning incidents and scenes into 
symbols and images of what was passing in his mind. . . . But the topic to 
which Mr. Glennie most frequently directed their conversation was the momen- 
tous question which every day becomes more and more pressing — the possibility of 
constructing an ideal of the Universe which shall reconcile the conflicting theories 
of philosophers, and satisfy the aspirations of man. . . . The reconciliation of past 
theories and unreasoned ideals he seeks to effect by the principle which he calls 
Mutual Determination. . . . The one truth which he considers to have been 
wrought out already is that the explanation of all phenomena must be looked for 
within the Universe, and not outside of it, in the mutual determination of the 
parts of the Universe, and not in onesided determination by a Being standing out- 
side the whole. . . . Mr. Glennie unites himself enthusiastically with those who 
believe that the ideal of Humanity must be the basis of the religion of the 
future ; that the idea of the general interest of the human race will become . 
efficacious both as a source of emotion and as a motive to conduct. A book 
so full of matter as this must always be left by the reviewer with a sense of 
the incompleteness of his task, and of having left behind him much that 
deserves to be noticed.' 



London: LONGMANS & CO. 



Lately published, Vol. I. in 8vo. price 15s. 

IN THE MORNINGLAND; 

Or, THE LAW OF THE MODERN REVOLUTION. 
By JOHN S. STUART-GLENNIE, M.A. Barrister- at-Law. 



OPINIONS OF THE PRESS on Vol. I. 



In the Morningland is an imperfect 
instalment of a project sufficiently ambitious. . . . 
What is required is a new synthesis of mate- 
rialism and idealism, a reconciliation of Hume 
and KLant, a new theory of causation, neither 
animistic like Christianity, nor materialistic like 
Positivism, and a Philosophy of History with the 
new law of causation for its basis. "With such 
an organon in our hands we can then proceed to 
the study of the phenomena of human nature, 
and to the specific problem of the origin of 
Christianity, and so inversly verify the ultimate 
Law of History winch had previously been specu- 
latively determined. New problems require new 
methods, and Mr. Stuart-Glennie professes to 
have discovered, or at least detected, a logical 
process which has escaped the notice of previous 
logicians A book which is not without con- 
siderable insight and sugaestiveness.' 

"Westminster Review. 

' As it seems to us, Dr. Strauss and his 
school are positively intoxicated with the cup 
which modern physical science has for some 

years past been offering to their lips If the 

reader would measure the preposterous lengths 
to which this intoxication will lead some men, 
let him read Hadtmax n ' s ' G-ott und Naturwissen- 
schaft,' or Mr. STUAr.T-GLENXiE's/ttMe Morning- 
land How men like Dr. Strauss and Mr. 

Stuart-Glennie can imagine ' etc. 

Edinburgh Review. 

'In the present volume we have an 
instalment of the verification of " an ultimate 
Law of History." If this is well founded, Mr. 
Stuart-Glexnie may well claim to be the 
Newton of the Moral Sciences, for hitherto cer- 
tainly the student of history has looked in vain 
for his law of gravitation. Hegel tried it with 
indifferent success ; Comte tried it ; now the 
author essays to reconcile these in a higher 
unity which" shall include the truth, and avoid 
the error of both- We a re" bound to say that this 
attempt is not made in the usual spirit of eclec- 
ticism but, on the contrary, the author 

goes to work like a good workman, advancing solid 
views of his own .... His remarks on the differ- 
ence between the Neo- Platonic Trinity and the 

Christian Trinity are acute and profound So 

far the doctrines and miracles of the gospels are 
explained. But wb a t of the moral element — that 
so characteristic withdrawal from the outward 
ceremonies to the " heart"? Here we are referred 
to the remarkable revolution that took place 
(about the sixth century B.C.) in all the old 
religions, from China to Egypt, the rise every- 
where of a subjective or inward tendency, as 
contrasted with the former concentration in the 
outward and objective. It is the change, for ex- 
ample, of Buddhism. The Christian religion 
thus arose from a set of causes exactly resembling 
those which gave birth to the religions of Con- 
fucius and Buddha. All this, according to Mr. 
Stuart-Glennie, is part of the progress of the 
human mind, from [the conception of onesided 
determination, through the differentiation of 
objective and subjective, to the conception of 
mutual determination, an idea whose social re- 
flection will be seen in co-equality, co-operation, 
and co -fraternity. Whether he has got hold of 

In May, Vol. II., 



the ultimate Law of History or not, it is 
impossible to overlook the merits and interest of 
the present volume .... And we shall do the author 
the compliment of suspending judgment until he 
developes the rest of his case.' Examiner. 

' This is the first volume of a new 
Philosophy of History which is to explain as well 
as supersede the hypotheses of Christianity. The 
author begins by criticising preceding attempts 
in the same direction, and has little difficulty in 
showing various so-called historical laws to be 
only empirical generalisations. There is much 
to be said for his definition of the intellectual re- 
volution of the present day as " a change in 
men's notions of the causes of change." ' 

Fortnightly Review. 

' It is the work of a man of very great 
attainment and of apparently boundless industry 
for research, and forms the first of a series of 
volumes to which we at least shall look forward 
with very great interest. Our author possesses 
many of the qualities which make men really 
great in the world of thought. Though intensely 
original in that sense of the word which implies 
the exploration for oneself of almost entirely new 
fields of thought — at least to English minds — his 
range of reading is at the same time well-nigh 

ponderous There is contained in the pages of 

the volume before us a rich reward. The plan 
of the book is to treat Christianity chiefly in one 
of its characters, that of a Philosophy of History. 
A really brilliant piece of writing. .. .em- 
bodies this position Whatever may be the 

opinion to which one who reads the work may 
ultimately incline, he will at least allow to the 
author great power of putting a case, combined 
with perfect candour and a genuine love of 
truth.' Inquirer. 

'Mr. Stuart-Glennie' s volume comes 
very aptly as to time of publication with Dr. 
Colkxso's work on the " Pentateuch.". .. .He 
compares Broad-Churchism with Neo-Platonism, 
and very seriously to the disadvantage of the 

former The ultimate object of the Neo-Pla- 

tonic interpretations of " myth " was essentially 
the defence of the notion of law against that of 
miracle. The ultimate object, on the other hand, 
of the Broad-Church interpretations of " myth " 
—that is, of Christianity and the Bible — is the 
defence of, at all events, some sort of attenuated 
notion of miracle as against that of law. With 
this distinction, we need hardly say, that we 
most heartily agree.' Conservative. 

'Having thus laid down the Law of 
human History he presents a tabular classi- 
fication of the sciences and arts The author's 

explanation of aesthetics, or the science of beauty, 

is luminous In connection with his visit to 

Egypt the author has penned a glowing, and 
indeed poetical, picture of the splendour of its 
great river, and the effect of its fertilising power 
on the social as well as the physical character- 
istics of the population The author's direct 

attack upon the Christian revelation consists 
chiefly in his comparison of it with the Egyptian 

doctrine of Osirianism An author of great 

command of language, wide range of knowledge, 
and trained argumentative skill. ' Morning Post. 

completing the Work. 



London, LONGMANS & CO. 



Lately published, in One Vol. 8vo. price 7s. 6d. 



ARTHURIAN LOCALITIES: 

AN ESSAY ON. THE HISTOKICAL ORIGIN 
OF THE ARTHURIAN ROMANCE-CYCLE 
AS A NEW MYTHOLOGY FOR ART. 
With a Map of ' The North ' in the Sixth Century, or Arthurian Scotland. 
By JOHN S. STUART-GLElSnSTIE, M.A. Barrister-at-Law. 

OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 



' Dans un long essai (avec une 
carte) joint a la troisieme partie [du 
roman de Merlin] M. Stuart-Glennie 
entreprend de demontrer que le theatre 
des exploits d' Arthur a ete ce qu'il appelle 
l'Ecosse arthurienne : c'est a dire, l'Ecosse 
meridionale et la Marche anglaise. II 
faudra dorenavant de tenir compte de 
ses ingenieuses et interessantes recherches, 
quijettentun jour nouveau sur l'histoire 
(dirons- nous la legende ?) d' Arthur. Mais 
en ce qui concerne la nationalite des 
Pictes et l'origine des traditions ossianiques 
ou fingaliennes, auxquelles M. Stuart- 
Glennie a consacre un chapitre de son 
travail, il nous semble difficile d'admettre 
ses theories. Le travail de M. Stuart- 
Glexnie, publie a part a £dimbourg, 
forme un elegant volume, qui s'annonce 
comme le premier essai d'une serie intitulee 
"Arthuriana," et dont nous souhaitons vive- 
ment la continuation.' Bevue celtique. 

' Mr. Stuart- Glennie, in a very in- 
teresting essay on " Arthurian Localities," 
has endeavoured to show that the true seat 
of the power, and the localities of the a exploits 
of the historical Arthur, are to be found in 
what he has termed Arthurian Scotland. 
If the relative numbers of Arthurian legends 
in the different Cymric regions were to be 
held to decide the question, no doubt 
Mr. Glenxie's views would be abundantly 
borne out.' Westminster Review. 

' Mr. Stuart-Glennie finds in the north 
of England and south of Scotland a trail 
which leads him not only to the battlefields, 
but pretty well to all the scenes and places 
ennobled by chivaliy, or sentimentalized by 
love-making, which are to be found in Ar- 
thurian romance and history. Mi*.Glennie's 
tour ... is well worth reading.' 

Athenaeum. 

' Turning to the special object of Mr. 
Stuart-Glexxie's essay, a question of un- 
doubted interest is suggested by trie words 
" formal material of the new poesy;"' which he 
applies to the Arthur Cycle.' Spectator. 

4 Mr. Stuart-Glenxie's learned and 
thoughtful work on the Cymric traces In 
South Scotland. ... To the fullest extent 
we sympathise with Mr. Glennie in his 
wish that any differences in the opinions of 



the Gaelic schools on each side of the sea of 
Moyle may be thoroughly divested of bitter- 
ness Mr. Stuart-Glennie and his 

brother scholars are persuaded that the 
Cruithne, or Picts, sent colonies to Ireland 
long before the Dalriadic immigration, and 
that these colonies brought with them the 
Fenian traditions. . . . There is such good 
sense and judgment in an observation of 
Mr. Glexxie's that we present it again to 
our readers.' 

Dublin University Magazine. 

4 To those desirous of studying Arthu- 
rian and mediaeval romance, the early his- 
tory and topography of Southern Scotland, 
and the border lands of England, this 
volume will be a welcome and valuable 
accession.' Northern Star, Belfast. 

' Mr Stuart-Glennie's work gives a 
most admirable narrative of a very remark- 
able pilgrimage over the Arthurian localities 
in Scotland, performed in at once a poetic and 
philosophic spirit.' Aberdeen Journal. 

'Stuart-Glennie, die von Skene durch 
Priifung der historischen Nachrichten, 
sowohl wie der altcymrischen Gedichte, 
gewonnenen theoretischen Motive fur die 
Annehme der Existenz eines ursprunglich 
nordischen Arthur einem inductiven Ver- 
fahren unterworfen, und auf diese Weise zu 
allererst nachgewiesen hat, dass nicht nur 
der nordcymrische District die eigentliche 
Heimat der arthurischen Localitaten ist, 
sondern auch (so weit sich das iiberhaupt 
nachweisen lasst) derjenigen Ereignisse, 
welche in den an jene sich kniipfenden Sagen 

auf historischer Basis beruhen mogen 

Ausser diesen geschichtlichen Elementen 
enthalten die Arthurromane, wie der Verf. 
hervorhebt, gleich den Romanen des Mit- 
telalters iiberhaupt, auch noch mythische 
Elemente, die sich auf die altesten Redefor- 
men des indo-europaischen Stammes zu- 
riickfuhren lassen, ganz so wie dies mit den 

griechischen Mythen geschehen ist 

Stuart-Glennie wird sich durch die 
Ausfuhrung seiner beabsichtigten Arbeit 
ein ebenso grosses Verdienst erwerben, wie 
durch die vorliegende, welche wir der 
Aufmerksamkeit der Forscher auf dem Ge- 
biete der romantischen Litteratur dringend 
empfehlen.' 

GrOTTINGISCHE GELEHRTE ANZEIGEN. 



Edinburgh : EDMONSTON & DOUGLAS. 



